The Seduction of His Wife

by Janet Chapman

  “Look, I’m sorry I shouted at you back there,” he hollered. “And I’m sorry if I scared you. I promise to be a gentleman if you come back to the house, where it’s warm.”

  Sarah could tell he was only several yards away by the sound of his voice. She pursed her lips together and refused to answer.

  She heard him growl under his breath and let out a frustrated sigh. “Okay,” he said loudly. “I’ll just leave your jacket on this bush, and you can come home when you’re ready. I promise, I’m not angry anymore.”

  That was a flat-out lie. Mr. Alexander Knight was very angry: because he had a wife he didn’t want, because he’d been anxious to see his kids and family and they weren’t here, and because she wasn’t listening to him. Well, she didn’t care; she wasn’t going home until she had worked up the nerve to spend an entire evening and night alone in the house with a virtual stranger.

  Sarah’s watch started beeping, and she slapped her hand over her wrist to muffle the sound, frantically poking the buttons to make it stop. A rock farther down the shoreline rolled against another rock, and Sarah prayed the lapping waves had drowned out the alarm.

  “Sarah?” she heard him say from about thirty yards away. She held her breath for what seemed like forever before a snapping branch told her he’d finally gone into the woods.

  Still, she didn’t move, just in case it was a trick to make her think he’d left. She scowled at her watch; it was five minutes to four, and the alarm had been to remind her that Oprah’s show was coming on. Sarah leaned her head against the boulder with a frustrated sigh. So much for her plans to watch Oprah and then a quilting show on satellite TV. After that she had intended to sit in front of a crackling fire and work on her plans for the abandoned sporting camps she intended to turn into a first-rate tourist destination. And then she’d planned to go to bed and finish the novel she’d started last night.

  Sarah stared up at the clouds rolling in from the northwest and thought about the heroine in the book she was a third of the way through. What would Rachel Foster do if she found herself in this position? Sarah gave a soft snort. Rachel sure as heck wouldn’t be hiding in a hole in a rock, freezing her tail off. She’d be standing on tiptoe right in her unwanted husband’s face, telling him to quit shouting.

  Oh, to be like one of those women who seemed to pop right off the pages of the books she couldn’t get enough of. Ever since she’d discovered romance novels in the mail-order library catalog nine years ago, Sarah had been trying to live up to their wonderful examples. Even though she knew they were fictional, those women always seemed to be smart, feisty, and ever so sure of themselves. They had the bravado to love manly men, were confidently sexual creatures in their own right, and went after their dreams with the tenacity of salmon swimming upstream.

  She’d almost been living her own dream. She had found her slice of heaven here in these beautiful mountains, with two children who needed her and two brothers and a father figure she could love. And come spring, she would be a competely independent businesswoman and run her sporting camps the way she wanted to run them. Yes, she had found happily ever after, just like one of the women in her books.

  Well, except for the handsome hero part. But she wasn’t even thirty yet; there was still time for a flaming affair. In the historical romances especially, being a merry widow meant a woman was free to indulge in affairs of the heart. And that’s what Sarah had been planning on doing once she worked up the nerve.

  “Okay, enough dreaming,” she scolded herself in a whisper. “What would Rachel Foster do if she found herself married to a complete stranger?”

  Rachel was a fictional architect who lived on the coast of Maine, who had sworn off men—or at least passionate men. So Rachel probably wouldn’t care what her back-from-the-dead husband thought of being married to her. She would just go about her business as if he didn’t exist, wouldn’t she? Yeah, Rachel Foster would simply ignore the shouting man, and maybe even pretend he was still dead until everyone got home tomorrow.

  That certainly sounded doable to Sarah. She could just go back to the house and finish her preparations for tomorrow’s feast, watch her shows on the kitchen television, and then head to her room and lose herself in Rachel’s story. Alex Knight wouldn’t exist for her; he could have the great room to himself and the entire upstairs of the house.

  Sarah sat up with a resigned sigh. She should probably feed him, though. He had said he just wanted to shower, eat, and sleep until his kids got home. She could fix him a tray of food and serve him in the great room, so he could eat in front of the fire and not in her kitchen. Maybe…maybe she’d pour him a drink—or even two—of Grady’s whiskey. That should knock him out for the night.

  Come to think of it, maybe she’d pour herself a tall glass of whiskey mixed with a bit of lemonade and sip her way through the awkward evening ahead. Rachel Foster would have a drink, wouldn’t she?

  Sarah turned to peek over the top of the boulder and spotted her jacket hanging on a branch. She climbed down onto the shoreline, stepping from rock to rock to avoid getting her feet wet, grabbed the jacket, and slipped it on. Then, with the fictional Rachel Foster giving her courage, Sarah marched back to the lodge with all the dignity of a smart, feisty, confident heroine.

  Alex leaned back on the couch with a sigh of utter and complete satisfaction, lacing his fingers over his full belly as he stared at the empty plates on the coffee table. He’d literally licked them clean, not willing to miss even one drop of the most delicious pork gravy ever to grace a potato. And the stuffing! In a million years, he wouldn’t have thought he’d like toasted almonds and dried cranberries in his pork stuffing, but the taste lingering on his tongue had been divinely inspired.

  Alex spotted a carrot curl that had fallen off his plate and sat up to pop the thin, perfectly steamed ribbon into his mouth. Then he picked up the second glass of whiskey Sarah had poured him when she’d brought in fresh ice cubes a few minutes ago, and swirled the contents.

  The large wooden tray teemed with empty dishes, a tall glass of what had been lemonade, and a tiny vase arranged with some berry-laden twigs, all sitting on a crisp white linen place mat. The napkin accompanying the meal had been folded to look like a bird.

  Alex had stayed at a few five-star hotels in his time, and he couldn’t remember ever being served a tastier dinner in finer style. No wonder his dad had hired Sarah to keep house for them, if this was how they had been treated last summer.

  When Sarah had returned to the house, she’d gone straight to the fridge while reminding him to call his father, and she’d started making dinner without even giving him a glance. She’d been a completely different woman from the one who had run from the house in a panic. This Sarah was calm, politely aloof, and all business. She was still working in the kitchen; he could hear pans rattling and cupboard doors opening and closing occasionally, all over the sound of the television blaring out some sort of how-to program. After listening closely for several minutes, Alex realized that Sarah was watching a cooking show. Which made sense, as the smells that spilled through the swinging door whenever she came floating in with more food or drink made Alex wonder if he wasn’t having a culinary dream. At this rate, he’d gain back his twenty pounds—along with several extra—in less than a month.

  He took a sip of whiskey and leaned back on the couch to gaze around the great room, cataloging the many changes, some of them subtle and some obvious. The curtains were new, Grady’s favorite old chair had been reupholstered, and the windows gleamed spotlessly as they reflected the interior lighting. There wasn’t one dust bunny or cobweb to be found. The furniture was the same and his mother’s knicknacks were all still here, but everything had been tastefully rearranged and polished to an almost blinding shine. Hell, the place looked like a staged photo from Better Homes and Gardens.

  Actually, it looked like a very upscale bed-and-breakfast.

  “Have you been able to reach Grady yet?” Sarah asked as she came floating
through the swinging door, this time carrying an armful of wood that she dropped into the box by the hearth.

  “You don’t need to lug in wood, Sarah,” Alex said, setting down his glass to stand up.

  She shook her head and waved at him to stay sitting. “Don’t move,” she ordered, picking up the tray of empty dishes. “I don’t mind carrying in wood. I always wanted a fireplace back on Crag Island, but all we had was an ancient potbellied stove in the parlor.” She set the tray against one hip to free one of her hands and leaned down to top off his glass of whiskey from the bottle she’d left on the table. “You just sit back and enjoy being home. Did you find the towels for your shower okay? I moved them into the hall closet, where there was more room.”

  He’d noticed that the closet in the bathroom had been set up for everyone in the house to have his own shelf, labeled with their names. There was one empty shelf, and Alex assumed it was to have been his when he returned on schedule in a couple of months.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, frowning up at her when she asked him another question.

  “Were you able to reach Grady?”

  He shook his head. “No. They must still be out. I left a message with the desk clerk for Dad or Ethan to call home when they got in.”

  Sarah shot him a broad grin that made Alex catch his breath. Damn, she was beautiful when she smiled. “They’re going to jump right on that plane and fly home tonight, once they hear your voice,” she said.

  Alex shook his head again. “They could take off from the airport in Portland, because the plane is amphibious, but Ethan won’t land on the lake in the dark. Not with the kids on board, anyway.”

  “Oh. So they will have to wait until morning.”

  Alex nodded, his attention drawn back to the tray when she pulled it off her hip to hold with both hands. “Do you spoil everyone this way, Sarah, and wait on them as if they’re at your inn? Good Lord,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re going to turn my kids into spoiled brats.”

  She looked confused, if not a bit insulted. “I don’t spoil anyone. I just do my job well.”

  “You’ve turned this old house into a showcase, and you haven’t stopped working since you came back from your walk. Or are you trying to impress me, afraid I might tell my father that I think you should leave?”

  For a moment, Alex was sorry he’d said that. But dammit, she’d spent the last four hours acting as if she were serving the lord of the manor, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  “I’m not trying to impress you or anyone,” she said tightly, her back rigid with anger—which only served to accent her lush figure, Alex couldn’t help but notice. “Just because I like to keep a nice house and cook nice meals doesn’t mean I have a hidden agenda.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his eyes so he’d quit trying to picture what was under that pretty pink sweater. “The house is beautiful, and the meal was wonderful. And the whiskey,” he added, picking up his refilled drink, “was a very thoughtful and much appreciated addition.”

  “You’re welcome,” she softly snapped, turning and marching through the swinging kitchen door.

  Uh-oh. She had definitely noticed him noticing her chest. Well, dammit, a blind man would appreciate the way she filled out a sweater! He winced at the sound of several pans loudly clanging together, then again when a cupboard door slammed shut and the television volume was turned up higher. So his curvy housekeeper-wife had a bit of a temper, did she, as well as an aversion to being ogled? How…interesting. Alex tucked both those little facts away with a smile and saluted the kitchen door with his drink before he took another long sip.

  Chapter Three

  T he jerk! Sarah took a long swig of her whiskey-laced lemonade and glared at the closed door. The arrogant jerk—implying she’d spent the last four hours buttering him up because she was afraid of being fired! Alex might be the heir apparent, but Grady had given Sarah his word that she would have a home here on Knight land for as long as she wanted.

  Sarah took an angry swipe at the moisture suddenly welling in her eyes. Grady had even called her daughter last week and given her a fatherly hug when they’d come out of Judge Rogers’s chambers. Ethan and Paul had hugged her, too, and they had called her sister. Just because Alex Knight had the nerve to be alive didn’t mean she would be sent packing. She was not some disposable pawn, just because she was no longer needed to protect the children. And she sure as heck would never lower herself to groveling to keep her position.

  Sarah took another swig of her drink. She’d spent twelve miserable years indebted to Martha Banks and eight years trying to be invisible to that dragon’s bully of a son. The day she buried Martha last June, Sarah had walked away from the cemetery vowing never, ever, to let anyone make her feel inadequate again. Burying Martha had ended Sarah’s last obligation to her deceased father and had finally freed her to become the heroine of her own story.

  And when Grady Knight had landed on Crag Island in August, along with his grandchildren and two younger sons for a month’s vacation at her inn, he had presented Sarah with the opportunity to take the first important step toward her new life. Come keep house for them over the winter, Grady had offered, while she worked on reopening the abandoned sporting camps he’d acquired when he had bought the land they sat on several years ago. Grady’s only stipulation at the time had been for the sporting camps to be their little secret until he could convince his sons that they should be reopened.

  If there was one thing Sarah had never doubted, it was that she was an excellent innkeeper. And she was not going to let Mr. Jerk in there, she thought with another poisonous glare at the closed door, belittle her talents.

  She wasn’t turning his kids into brats, she was civilizing them. Delaney was learning to sew and finally taking an interest in what she wore and how she did her hair. And Tucker was finally able to cut his own meat without endangering himself or anyone close by. Even Ethan’s and Paul’s manners had improved. Grady had confessed to Sarah that his wife, Rose, had drilled manners into her sons from birth but that they may have grown a bit lax since her death seven years ago.

  Not that they were barbarians, they just needed some feminine input, Grady had explained. Rose had died just months after Tucker was born, and since Charlotte had run off two years later, the whole family had grown sort of ragged around the edges.

  Mr. Alex Knight could use a refresher course in manners as well, Sarah decided as she tilted her glass to catch the last drops of lemonade before turning to the counter to cut up more lemons. She quickly made another pitcher and refilled the bottom third of her glass with whiskey from the extra bottle in the pantry, then topped it off with lemonade, hoping Alex was gulping down his own whiskey. If he felt half as exhausted as he looked, the whiskey should knock him clean off his feet until tomorrow morning.

  Sarah smiled as she sipped her new drink, quite proud of her plan to ply Alex with liquor until he passed out. It was amazing what one could learn from novels, and she couldn’t wait to climb into bed so she could find out how Rachel Foster was going to get out of the mess she was in. When Sarah had stopped reading last night, Rachel had been sneaking through the secret tunnels of the beautiful mansion she’d helped her father design, trying to replace a stolen emerald earring. Tonight Sarah hoped to reach the part of the story where the sexual tension that had been building between Rachel Foster and Keenan Oakes finally exploded.

  Sarah swirled the ice in her half-empty glass and eyed the great-room door. Too bad Alex was such a jerk. He was a little on the thin side and a bit banged up, but he had the overall look of a romance hero. Especially those crystal blue eyes that could get a woman all hot and bothered if he ever turned on the charm. Assuming he wanted a woman’s attention, because he sure as heck hadn’t been trying to charm her!

  Sarah had caught him staring at her chest, but then, most men did. It was the main reason Roland Banks had married her; showing up with a curvy blond wife on his arm had been a great disguise. B
ut Alex Knight was just a typical lech.

  When the phone rang in the other room, Sarah immediately rushed to the door, pressing her ear against it to listen.

  “Hello,” she heard Alex say. “Ethan! Ethan, it’s me, Alex!”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Sarah heard, “Ethan, listen, it really is me. I’m not dead, brother,” Alex said softly. “I didn’t get shot, because I escaped into the jungle. It took me eleven days to make my way out…. No, no, I’m fine, I promise. I tried calling home from the U.S. embassy in Brazil, but no one answered. Is Grady there? And Delaney and Tucker?”

  There was an even longer silence, then Sarah heard Alex pull in a shuddering breath and softly say, “No, don’t wake the kids. You’ll never get them back to sleep. I want to talk to Dad. Put him on. Wait! Tell him first, so he doesn’t have a heart attack when he hears my voice.”

  Sarah straightened and took a large gulp of lemonade as she fought back tears. She could just imagine Grady and Ethan in their hotel room in Portland, Ethan telling Grady that his son was alive.

  “D-Dad,” Alex said, his voice thick with emotion. “Jesus, Dad, don’t cry. I’m okay. I’m home, and I promise you that I’m perfectly fine.”

  Sarah pressed her ear up to the door again, wiping a tear running down her cheek. She was so happy for Grady and Ethan, though sad that their reunion had to be taking place over the phone. But tomorrow would be a great celebration. And she would make sure it was extra special for them, when the whole family sat down at the table again.

  “Yes, Dad, I met Sarah.” Sarah pressed her ear closer. “Yes, she’s very sweet, though I was surprised to find myself married to her…. No, I didn’t make a scene.”

  Another flat-out lie! Alex Knight was a compulsive liar.

  “Yes, of course I will be a gentleman…. No, Dad, I won’t say anything to her until you get here…. I promise you that I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it when you get home…. Yes, we’ll discuss the situation then. Give Delaney and Tucker a kiss for me, will you? Lord, I can’t wait to see them…. Okay, then, good night. I’ll be waiting on the dock for you at daybreak. I love you, too,” he finished thickly.