by Laurie Paige
“I’ll be tied up in meetings while we get the new contract under way. Sometimes I work all night at the office.”
She nodded in understanding.
“You won’t mind, will you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” he repeated.
She couldn’t read anything unusual in his tone, but a chill danced along her nerves as if he’d spoken in a threatening voice.
“As long as you get the semblance of a marriage, enough to fool the judge, that’s all you care about, right?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to let him goad her into a fight if that was what he was after.
“I can have all the women I want…discreetly, I be- lieve you said?”
She clenched her hands, stopping an instinctive pro- test by dint of will. “Yes.”
That was the bargain. She could stand it for a year.
“You know, I think this might work. I’ve heard that the best marriages are those based on friendship rather than something so fickle and elusive as love. We can be great friends, give your brother the stable home he needs and enjoy the freedom of an open marriage.”
He sounded so smugly pleased as he counted the ad- vantages of their marriage that she wanted to hit him. She bit the inside of her lip and said nothing.
“Of course, there are those who think marriage is a sacred commitment. But we have an agreement, a busi- ness contract, as it were. Isn’t that right?”
“Why ask me?” she said at last, feeling compelled to respond to the one-sided conversation. “You have it all figured out.”
“Do I?” he questioned on a harsher note. “I won- der.”
She was glad when he fell silent for the rest of the ride. Behind them, Ken followed at a safe distance in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. She wished she could have ridden with him, but she suspected Harrison would never have allowed it.
Harrison drove directly to his family home, which was nestled in a dip on top of a hill overlooking the city. She hadn’t yet been inside the wood-and-stone structure. She’d been too busy at the center. He’d had to come to her that month.
Her mouth was totally dry by the time he parked in the three-car garage. A red sports car occupied one spot.
“Welcome home,” her husband said with a cynical smile as he threw the side door open on its well-oiled hinges.
The foyer was an atrium, from which the sky was visible through domed panels of glass. The interior of the house was guarded by a wall of black wrought-iron fencing. Harrison went to a concealed pad and punched in a code. The gate swung open.
“Very impressive,” she murmured when he looked at her.
Again she had the impression of a young man show- ing off a treasure the same way he’d done at the moun- tain retreat. It was confusing. He surely didn’t give a damn what she thought about his living arrangements.
“Maggie Bird is the housekeeper. She comes in during the week. She leaves meals in the refrigerator for dinner. If you don’t like those arrangements, work it out with her.”
“That sounds fine.” She meant to have as little im- pact on his life as possible during their year. That was only fair. No disruption, no scenes, no jealous rages over his women. If she was lucky, she’d never know about them.
“This way,” he said, crossing a marble-tiled hall.
To her left was a lovely living room done in desert colors of dun and dark, brick-toned red. Turquoise and silver jewelry was displayed on one wall in enclosed frames, as if they were pictures.
A den with a huge television was behind the living room. The study and kitchen were on the right. Beyond the kitchen, doors opened onto the patio, which was lined with trees and shrubs in huge pots, making an oasis of the place.
“The master suite,” Harrison announced, leading the way across another atrium filled with wicker furniture and views of the mountains on one side and the valley on the other. He opened the door and stepped inside.
Isa crossed the threshold.
The room was cleanly divided by a glass wall lined with plants in ceramic pots in Native American designs. One half of the suite was a bedroom, the other a sitting room.
She did a double take on the bathtub—amply sized for two—nestled into a corner with windows on two sides. Marble steps led up to the kidney-shaped tub, which with its water jets could do double duty as a hot tub. She could picture a bottle of wine and platters of exotic cheese and fruit arrangements at hand on the marble windowsill.
A feeling of envy for those women he invited up here for a romantic tryst burst through her. She wouldn’t be one of them.
“Where’s my room?” she asked.
He tilted his head slightly to one side and gave her an oblique glance. “You don’t care for this one?”
“It’s very nice, but it’s obviously yours. I want a room of my own.”
“Those weren’t the conditions we agreed on.”
She raised her chin. “You insisted on your marital rights. I agreed. You may…” She searched for words, but couldn’t find any to express precisely what she had to say. The blunt truth was the only way. “You may come to me when you feel it necessary, but other- wise….” She trailed off at the enraged glitter in his eyes.
“Otherwise leave you the hell alone,” he finished. “Well, sweet wife, this may come as a shock, but I can do without. And I sure as hell will before I crawl to any woman.”
He ran a finger along her cheek, jaw and neck, then along the V of her blouse, his action at odds with his words.
Sensation swirled inside her, and heat gathered in her most secret places.
He leaned closer, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “When you issue the invitation, I’ll come to your bed, not a moment before.”
“I won’t…” she began, then faltered to a stop. She wondered what diabolical tortures she would have to tolerate during the coming year. Life had a way of get- ting back at those who dreamed too big.
“Yes, you will, my sweet wife.” He didn’t bother to disguise the thread of revenge in his voice. “Oh, yes, you definitely will.”
Goose bumps rose on her scalp, her arms, her back. Even her thighs tingled at his ominous words.
“I’m not some weak-willed, spineless bimbo who will lie down and let you walk over her.” She tried to sound as confident as he had.
“The challenge will be to see who can hold out longer.” Giving her a look she couldn’t interpret, he took her arm. “I’ll show you to your room.”
The other bedrooms were down a short, open hallway adjoining the kitchen and breakfast bar. He gave her the one directly across the outdoor patio from the master suite.
“I have work to do,” he said abruptly, stepping back and allowing her to enter the room alone. “Can you get your stuff moved from your apartment without help?”
She nodded. After he withdrew, she paced the spa- cious room, which was decorated with Mexican tiles and area rugs on the shining floor. Stopping at the doors that led to the patio, she peered outside.
She could see his windows easily. She realized the corner of his bedroom visible from her windows was the one that housed the sexy bathtub built for two. A strange feeling welled up inside her when she thought of him in it with another woman. She ruthlessly held it at bay.
Looking past the covered patio, she recognized the rectangular shape of a swimming pool. A cover of some kind hid the water, assuming it had any. She laid her purse on the table in the sitting area and slipped outside.
The air temperature had rapidly climbed into the sev- enties in spite of the snow visible on the mountains. The desert could be unforgiving to the unwary—burn- ing one minute, freezing the next. One had to be pre- pared for whatever came.
She swallowed hard and glanced at the corner window of the master suite. If she ever found her husband in that tub with another woman, she’d drown both of them! Perhaps she should make that clear from the start. Discretion started at home.
“You’re what?”
>
Harrison smiled at the attorney, who had been a friend of the family years before he was born. In fact, he’d been named after the man. “Married,” he re- peated.
“My God, I think I’m going to have a heart attack.” Harry Stockard clutched his chest dramatically. “Then I’m going to beat you on the head until you make sense.”
“Yeah? What’s the next thing after that?”
“We try to figure out how to get you out of this mess. I suppose an annulment would be too much to hope for?”
“No annulment,” Harrison replied, scenes from yes- terday leaping into his mind.
The hot fury returned, too. No, by damn, there defi- nitely would not be an annulment. She was going to beg him to come to her before the year was up—
“What?” he asked blankly.
Harry sighed. “Lord, spare me another hormone- crazed client I don’t think I can take it anymore,” he intoned piously with an upward glance.
“Can it,” Harrison said. “You sound about as sin- cere as a three-dollar bill.”
“Okay,” the attorney said, getting down to business. He drew a notepad closer and uncapped a pen. “We’ll try for a marriage agreement after the fact, although I’m sure I don’t need to tell you she holds the upper hand since you’ve already put the ring on her finger. If we’re lucky, she’s still besotted with you and will sign any rights away—”
“I think we can safely forget that strategy.”
Harry studied him for a long minute. Harrison met his stare, then shrugged when his advisor shook his head in despair.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“A marriage not exactly of my choosing,” Harrison admitted. “I’ve been caught by one of the smartest little connivers this side of the Rockies.”
Harry gave his client a speculative glance. “I think we could get you off on a temporary-insanity plea. In fact, I’m damned sure of it.”
“Forget it. I knew what I was doing…not exactly what I was getting into, but I knew I was doing it.”
“This makes less sense by the minute. Start at the beginning and give me a point by point replay of the events leading up to the marriage.” He gave Harrison a wicked grin.
Harrison started with day one and worked through the marriage and the woman now installed in a guest room at his home as his wife.
“Whew,” Harry said when the story was finished, “sounds like you got yourself into a nest of vipers. She wants to bring her kid brother in, too, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s in a detention center.”
“My God,” Harry said. “I didn’t think it could get any worse. What’s the kid in for?”
“Armed robbery.”
Harrison was grimly pleased to see his attorney look even more pained at this disclosure. The whole story, as he told it, began to seem like a bad play. He won- dered about the last act. Would it end with an annulment as Isa had promised?
Not during his lifetime.
He wasn’t living like a monk for a year. She’d soon learn he meant what he said. He glanced up to see the lawyer looking at him with a worried frown. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Do you have a list of her assets? That would be helpful in proving she married you for money in case she asks for a big settlement at the end of the year…or at the end of the marriage, whichever comes first.”
“Other than her clothes and an old car, I haven’t seen any assets. She lives in a furnished apartment. Oh, I do have the information on her brother.” He dug the list out of his pocket. It had been on the breakfast bar when he went to the kitchen that morning. He hadn’t gotten a glimpse of his wife.
Harry took the paper and read it over. “What’s the most important—getting out of the marriage as quickly and painlessly as possible or checking on this young hoodlum and his problems?”
“The hoodlum.”
“You’ve got it bad for this woman.”
Harrison allowed himself a tight smile. “I find her rather…interesting.”
“Oh, well, now that you put it that way…”
“Let me work out the problems of my marriage.” He stood and paced to the window. In the distance, he could see the green oasis of trees that surrounded his home.
“So why did you come to me?”
“I want you to see about getting the kid released into my wife’s custody…no, into my custody.”
Harrison smiled, pleased with the idea. It gave him the leverage he needed to keep his beautiful, sharp- witted wife in the palm of his hand.
His hand tingled, reminding him of how she would feel—her hot, smooth body under his, lifting to him, sheathing him like warm satin, her little cries of plea- sure breathless and urgent.
He fought a losing battle with his libido. He wanted to go home now, at this very moment, and claim all the rights that marriage was supposed to confer on a man.
“I know the juvenile judge,” Harry mentioned, look- ing at the short list of names. “We were in law school together. I think I can get the venue changed to Reno. That will save you a few dollars.” His tone implied Harrison would probably need all the funds he could get to protect his future.
“Thanks.” Harrison stuck his hands in his pockets and pictured his home. He wondered what his wife was doing at this moment. Reading? Snooping through the house? Playing the lady of leisure?
Maggie would have her hide if Isa got in the way of the cleaning and dusting. Now there was an interesting combination—his conniving wife and his spirit-woman housekeeper….
He realized Harry was giving him instructions. He’d better listen. He might need the law on his side before the year was up—or he turned into a blithering idiot, whichever came first.
“One other thing,” he tossed in when Harry paused.
“What?” the man who’d been his friend and advisor for ten years snapped.
“The mining claim. Do you recall Dad ever men- tioning that he’d once had a partner?”
Harry shook his head. “But old Jefferson handled your father’s affairs until he retired five years ago. I’ve got a title company researching all that. They have a guy at the courthouse today.”
“Good. Hurry with that nuptial agreement. I’m anx- ious to see what my wife will do on that.”
A horrified expression swept over the attorney. “Whatever you do, don’t get her pregnant,” he said.
After a startled pause, Harrison mused on the possi- bility. He hadn’t thought about having a child, certainly not with a woman who had forced him into marriage. He wondered what Isa would say if he suggested it.
“Now that’s a thought,” he murmured aloud.
Two could play at this con game.
Harry cast his namesake a searching perusal, gave a dramatic groan and covered his face with hands. “Hor- mone-crazed, just like I thought”
“Not quite,” Harrison said dryly. “Go ahead and draw up the postnuptial agreement. Let’s see if she’ll sign it.”
Chapter Six
“I don’t believe you.”
Isa held up her hand with the circle of gold on her finger.
“That doesn’t prove a thing,” the woman scoffed.
She was tall, almost Isa’s height, and about forty, maybe forty-five years old. She wore moccasin-type loafers, jeans, a checked shirt with a leather pouch on a leather thong hanging over it and a beaded headband to keep her black-and-gray hair out of her eyes. Her earrings were silver dream-catchers.
Upon letting herself in with a key and seeing Isa sit- ting at the breakfast bar reading the paper, the woman had asked Isa in very unfriendly tones when she planned on leaving.
Isa had decided the newcomer had to be Maggie Bird. After eliciting this information from the suspicious housekeeper, Isa had gone on to explain that she and Harrison were married and she would be living here in the future.
Maggie flatly refused to believe her. “Harrison Stone isn’t a man to get married in some hurry-scurry chapel in Tahoe.”
�
�Well, he did.”
“He didn’t say anything Friday,” the housekeeper said, as if this proved the lie.
“It was…a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“Harrison doesn’t make decisions like that.”
“He did this time.” Isa picked up the rest of the Reno newspaper and rose. “I’ll be in my room while you finish in here.” She vacated the den and tried to tell herself she wasn’t in full retreat from the scornful snort of the other woman.
An hour passed. Then another.
Isa heard the whir of the vacuum cleaner at one point. At another, she thought she heard a noise in the hall. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the closed room an- other second, there was a knock on the door.
“Harrison’s home,” Maggie Bird called out.
Isa’s heart nearly beat her rib cage to splinters as she stood in the middle of the room and wondered what to do.
After the scary minute, she calmed down and opened the door. She could hear voices in the kitchen—Mag- gie’s and the pleasing, masculine baritone of her hus- band.
She fingered the ring on her left hand, then took a deep breath and went down the hall to face them.
Harrison leaned against the breakfast bar, which was an extension of the counter. Maggie was arranging Chi- nese takeout in bowls which she then heated in the mi- crowave oven. Two places were set at the counter where she’d eaten cereal and drunk her coffee in solitary si- lence.
“I brought lunch,” Harrison said, to explain his pres- ence. “I figured Maggie wouldn’t have enough pre- pared since she didn’t expect an extra mouth to feed.”
“Do you eat lunch here?” Isa asked.
“Most of the time.”
“It saves money,” Maggie put in. She set the bowls on the counter, added glasses of iced tea with sprigs of mint and lemon twists stuck on a toothpick in each one. “And it’s healthier. I know all about that nutrition stuff.”
“Madam,” he said, indicating Isa should be seated.
Maggie ate her lunch standing at the counter, her black eyes alight with interest in Harrison’s new wife. Isa felt like a strange new breed in a zoo.