The Seduction of His Wife

by Janet Chapman

  Sarah slowly got to her feet. Her knee protested slightly, but not enough to keep her an invalid any longer. Well, except that she couldn’t see. How dumb was she, to give herself welder’s flash? She had read the warning label on the box that housed the bulb, but the new bulb hadn’t been hot or even all that bright when she’d bent close to see if it smelled like ozone. Sunburned eyeballs; who would have guessed?

  Sarah shuffled to the reception counter, blindly rummaged through the large bin, and found what she thought was a box of crackers. She also found what felt like several chocolate bars, and she hungrily tore into the candy instead.

  “Ethan’s coming to get us on the snowmobile,” Alex told Sarah when he returned to the lodge ten minutes later. “Or I can call him back and say we’ll wait until tomorrow if you want. They’re putting the engine from my wrecked truck in one of the other pickups today, and your SUV can be fixed at least enough to drive by—” He came to a halt in front of her. “What in hell are you eating?”

  “Breakfast,” she said as she reached up and wiped chocolate off her chin, then licked her finger. “And as much as I’ve been enjoying this little vacation, if we stay another night, I’ll starve to death.” She gave him a thoughtful look—at least, it looked thoughtful to Alex, even though he couldn’t see her eyes. “Unless you’re Davy Crockett and can shoot us a bear to eat.”

  Alex plucked what was left of the candy bar out of her sticky hand. “It’s Daniel Boone who shot the bear, not Davy Crockett. And bear meat is rank and tough.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered, blindly rummaging through the bin until she found the box of crackers. “I just need something edible. Who did the cooking before I came along, anyway?”

  “Between housekeepers, you mean? Whoever was the hungriest or the least tired,” he said, snatching the box of crackers from her. He took her face in his hands and bent down to kiss a spot of chocolate on her chin. “You’ve gone and dented my ego again,” he whispered, sliding his lips across hers. “I’ve been cooking my heart out for you for two days.”

  “Poor baby,” she crooned, giving him a soothing, motherlike kiss. She patted his cheek. “Does that make it better?”

  “Hell, no,” he muttered, folding her into his arms and covering her mouth with his. “Dammit, Ethan will be here in twenty minutes,” he said once he found the strength to tear himself away from her luscious mouth.

  “Your vocabulary becomes quite limited when you…when you get…”

  “Horny?” he finished for her, just before he kissed her again, not coming up for air for at least five minutes this time. And then it was only long enough to say, “You do make me horny, Sunshine,” before he picked her up and carried her to the mattress.

  The minute he set her down, she rolled away and scrambled to her feet, groping to put the chair between them. “I don’t want Ethan walking in to find us rolling around on the floor,” she said somewhat raggedly. She took a deep breath and brushed down the front of her chocolate-smeared sweatshirt. “I’ve never ridden on a snowmobile,” she told him, her voice still shaky, and she shook her head as if to clear it. “And I never expected to be blind the first time I did.”

  “Did what?” Alex asked absently, watching her lovely breasts rise and fall with each breath.

  “Ride a snowmobile,” she snapped. “Are you staring at my chest?”

  “Uh-uh,” he said, his eyes nearly crossing when she took another deep breath.

  She came back to the mattress and started feeling around the blankets. “Help me find my bra,” she demanded. “I need to finish dressing before Ethan gets here.”

  Alex stopped her by dragging her against his own chest. “Shhh,” he crooned, touching his smile to her hair. “You can’t be self-conscious around Ethan, Sarah. He’s really okay with our being married. In fact, he’s very happy for both of us.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to rub it in his face. He has to realize what we’ve been doing here all night.”

  Alex grinned over her head. “I imagine even Delaney knows what we’ve been doing,” he said with a chuckle. “Everyone considers our marriage real, Sarah.” He dropped his forehead to hers. “Except you.”

  He could feel her braless breasts pushing against him, her lovely nipples provoking him unmercifully. Alex muttered a curse and set her away when he heard the distant sound of a snowmobile approaching. “Here’s your bra,” he said, picking it up off the floor and handing it to her. “It’s…ah, it’s a little ripped.”

  Sarah must have also heard the snowmobile. “Just give it to me,” she hissed. She snatched the bra away and said, “Point me toward the bathroom.”

  He did, holding her hand so she didn’t run into anything.

  As she dressed, Alex pushed the dying embers to the back of the fireplace, then covered them with ashes. He was putting the poker back on its peg when he noticed the large map hanging beside the mantel. He stepped closer when he saw WHISTLER’S MOUNTAIN printed in small, black letters beside a drawing of a mountain bumping out of a pencil-sketched forest.

  Alex leaned away to view the entire map and realized it wasn’t a scaled map but a collage of drawings pointing out wildlife habitats, geographical places of interest, and natural landmarks surrounding the sporting camps. Tiny beavers had been drawn near some of the ponds, an old cabin was near one of the other mountains, and moose, deer, and bear were scattered throughout the five-by-four-foot map.

  But what caught Alex’s eye were the caves drawn on the side of Whistler’s Mountain—the series of caves that had formed in the talus when part of the mountain had broken off, likely when the glacier fields had receded thousands of years ago.

  Someone knocked on the porch door. Alex spun in surprise and walked over to open it. “You knocked?” he said. “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to embarrass your wife by walking in on something I shouldn’t,” Ethan said, stepping inside as he brushed snow off his shoulders. He lifted an inquiring brow. “She is your wife now, isn’t she?”

  Alex shrugged.

  Ethan gave him a crooked grin. “Did you leave your charm in South America, or have you forgotten how to seduce a pretty mouse?”

  Alex pointed at the closed bathroom door. “That is not a mouse, that’s a—”

  The bathroom door shot open, and both men turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway with her sweatshirt held against her naked chest.

  “Dammit, Alex, you ripped my bra, and I can’t fix it with only one hand,” she scolded, her bra dangling in her good hand. “And so help me God, if you even hint to Ethan what went on here last night, I will shoot you as soon as you teach me to use a gun.”

  “Too late, sister-in-law,” Ethan said softly.

  Sarah gasped, gathering her shirt tighter to her chest, then darted back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her so hard that the walls rattled.

  Alex sighed. “You couldn’t have just kept quiet?”

  “Not on your life,” Ethan said with a chuckle. “She walked straight into that one.”

  “Now I’ll never get her out of there.” Alex eyed his brother. “Unless I can tell her you walked home. There’s a set of snowshoes hanging on the porch.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m driving, Sarah can sit behind me, and you can ride on the tow sled.”

  Alex grabbed Ethan by the arm and shoved him out the door. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided you should get a job at Loon Cove Lumber for a couple of months before we take it over. Without letting anyone know who you are, of course, so you can get a feel for the crew.”

  “Half this county knows who I am.”

  “But they don’t know you’re about to become the new owner,” Alex countered. “You can tell them we’re thinking of opening our own sawmill.”

  “I am not going to Loon Cove Lumber one day sooner than I have to, and sure as hell not as a worker. Those guys would have a field day giving me all the grunt work.”

  “Best way to learn a new busin
ess is from the ground up,” Alex reminded him, and slammed the door on Ethan’s black look.

  Alex walked over to the bathroom and opened the door to find Sarah sitting on the straight chair. She was holding her eye bandages in her lap, her sweatshirt was back on, and her bra was on the floor.

  “He was only teasing you, Sunshine,” Alex told her, brushing her hair over her shoulder. “Ethan’s sense of humor is a bit rusty.”

  “Where is he?” she asked, leaning forward to look into the main room.

  “Outside, waiting for us.”

  “I’m not wearing my eye patches. I don’t need them anymore.”

  “They have to stay on for the ride home; the cold wind will dry out your eyes. Once we get home, then we’ll see.” He lowered to his haunches, once again smoothing back her hair. “Making love to your husband is nothing to be embarrassed about, Sarah. It’s what married people do.”

  “Our marriage license is forged.”

  “It’s only forged if you say it is, otherwise it’s as legal as if I signed it myself. It’s not just Ethan that’s bothering you. What else?”

  “Everyone knows why you brought me here yesterday, don’t they? Paul and Grady were in on your plan.”

  “Only because they love you.”

  She finally looked at him, but Alex couldn’t have read what she was thinking if he’d had a crystal ball. “You planning on making Ethan stand out in the cold all day?” He took the bandages out of her hand. “How about if I dump him off the tow sled a few times on the way home? Will that satisfy your sense of revenge for embarrassing you?”

  He finally got a faint smile from her. “I’d feel even better if he had to run to catch up with the sled each time he fell,” she suggested. “Or if he didn’t catch up with us at all about a mile from home.”

  Alex nodded. “I think I can make that happen.” He gently kissed her, then carefully set the bandages back over her eyes and smoothed down the tape to secure them. He picked up her bra and stood, bringing Sarah with him. “Let’s finish getting you dressed,” he said, turning her around and lifting the hem of her shirt. “With any luck, Paul’s got a stew cooking.”

  “Paul can cook?” she mumbled from somewhere in her shirt as she held it up for him.

  Alex wiped the sweat suddenly beading on his brow. He knew how to take off a bra, but he’d never paid much attention to putting one on. But then he made the mistake of peeking at the beautifully full breasts that were just waiting for him to touch and decided it was a shame to bind up such perfection. Alex pulled the hem of her shirt back down to her waist with a curse of defeat. “You’ll have enough layers on that nobody will notice if you’re missing some clothing,” he said, tossing the bra and sweeping Sarah into his arms.

  He carried her over to the door, stuffed her into her jacket, pulled a cap down over her head, and shoved a mitten over her good hand. “You’ll have to put your bandaged hand in my pocket for the ride home,” he said, hustling her out the door.

  He picked her up again to carry her off the porch and through the deep snow, stopping when he reached the idling snowmobile. It took only a threatening glare to make Ethan scramble off the seat and plod to the dogsled attached to the rear bumper. Alex set Sarah down on the seat, climbed aboard, and tucked both her hands in his jacket pockets so she could hold on.

  “I’ll go slow,” he promised in a whisper, “until I see a good place to dump Ethan.”

  That got him a full smile. Alex patted her hand in his pocket, revved the engine in warning, and drove down the steep bank of the shoreline and onto the lake.

  It took every bit of courage Sarah possessed not to blush like a new bride when she walked into the house on Alex’s arm. Grady greeted her with a hug, and Paul greeted Sarah by pulling her away from Alex and leading her over to the stove. He held a spoon to her lips and asked why his venison stew didn’t taste like hers did, since he had followed her recipe exactly. Sarah thought she’d died and gone to heaven to be tasting something edible and said she’d have to eat an entire bowl in order to figure out where he’d gone wrong.

  “You added the potatoes at the start,” she told Paul once she’d finished her second bowl. “You’re only supposed to add them an hour before you intend to serve the stew, or they’ll make the broth too thick and starchy.”

  “But I watched a show about cooking in crock pots this morning,” Paul said. “They just throw everything in at once, so you can come home at the end of the day to a fully cooked meal.”

  “Crock pots are designed to cook slowly,” Sarah explained, trying to see him through the excessive salve Alex had gobbed on her eyes when he’d taken off her bandages. “You made your stew on the stove and set the heat too high. That makes the potatoes mushy.”

  “If we’re done with the cooking lessons,” Grady said, shoving his empty bowl away to rest his elbows on the table, “we need to get down to business before the kids get home from school. I don’t want them realizing the pickle we’re in. It’ll only make them worry.”

  “What pickle?” Ethan asked, dropping his spoon into his bowl and also pushing it away.

  Sarah stood up and started stacking the dirty bowls inside each other with her good hand, but Alex reached out and pulled her back down into her chair. “We’ll get those after our meeting. Sit down and listen. It’s your pickle as much as ours, Mrs. Knight.”

  Sarah kicked him under the table, just hard enough to make him grunt—and her smile.

  “I found an engine for one of the skidders,” Grady said. “Jason and Harley believe they can put the diesel engine from our generator into the delimber with a bit of retrofitting. And I’ve found us a nearly new tree harvester for a very sweet price.” He blew out a tired breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “But even with the insurance check that’s coming, we’ll still have to come up with forty-six thousand dollars to be back in business.”

  “Then find an old used harvester,” Alex suggested.

  Grady shook his head. “I think we should buy this one. The price is too good to pass up.”

  “How much?” Ethan asked.

  Grady folded his arms over his chest and rocked back on the rear legs of his chair. “It’ll only cost us permission to rebuild eight miles of our roads.”

  “No,” Alex snapped. “Porter isn’t touching one inch of our roads.”

  “This feud has gone on long enough,” Grady said, dropping his chair onto all four legs. “The man did you a favor by stealing your wife, Alex. And you know damn well that if it hadn’t been Clay, it would have been someone else. Hell, Charlotte left him within a month.”

  Sarah sucked in her breath. No wonder the Knights didn’t like Porter.

  “The bastard’s blackmailing us,” Ethan protested.

  “No, he’s buying permission to rebuild our own roads,” Grady returned with a growl, his patience obviously waning. “And the price is two hundred thousand dollars for only the permission. He’ll have to pay for the cost of the improvements. We win both ways: we get a harvester and ten miles of new roads.”

  “No,” Alex repeated softly. “We’ll sell off some land.”

  Grady shook his head. “I didn’t scrape and scheme to buy land just to sell it off the first time we find ourselves in difficulty. That’s moving backward, and that’s against company policy.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Paul interjected. “Even if we get Porter’s harvester and get the delimber up and running, we’re still forty-six thousand short.”

  Sarah fingered the wedding band on her left hand. Did she dare find out just how her second marriage was going to work?

  “I know where you can get forty-six thousand dollars, interest-free,” she said, looking over at Grady but seeing Alex stiffen.

  “Where?” Grady asked.

  “From me. I received a couple of checks in the mail two days ago, one for fifty thousand dollars as down payment on my half of the inn and one for four thousand for…for some artwork I sold.”

  Grady im
mediately shook his head. “That’s your personal money, Sarah. We’re not touching—”

  “We’ll take it,” Alex countered before Grady had finished, his intensely focused gaze locking on Sarah’s. “Interest-free.”

  “No,” Paul said, echoing his father. “We’re not touching Sarah’s money. That’s most of her entire savings.”

  “She’s a Knight now, isn’t she?” Alex asked, still looking at her.

  “We can work around our money problems,” Ethan said. “We just have to go back to using chain saws instead of a harvester, we’ll get the delimber up and running, and we still have one working skidder in the shop. We can operate with what we have.”

  “Then I guess you don’t really consider me part of this family,” Sarah said softly, looking at the others.

  “That’s not it,” Ethan snapped. “We do not marry women for their money.”

  “I kind of like the idea of marrying a woman for her money,” Alex drawled, warming Sarah’s heart with his smile.

  She lifted her chin. “But I have one condition.”

  He lifted one brow.

  “You take Clay Porter’s tree harvester and let him rebuild ten miles of your road.”

  “Done,” Alex said quickly. He suddenly stood up, slid his arms under her knees and around her back, and lifted her out of her seat. “Sarah needs a nap,” he told the others. “Pregnancy is very tiring.”

  The last thing Sarah saw before Alex carried her through the swinging door were the stunned expressions on the three Knight men. She smacked Alex in the chest as he carried her through the great room. “We agreed to keep the baby a secret,” she hissed, smacking him again when he smiled.

  He started climbing the stairs. “All’s fair in love and war, Sunshine. You start throwing money and ultimatums at me, and I’m going to counter with whatever ammunition I have.” He stopped at the top of the stairs, his grin a bit sinister. “You’re not the only one who can get a few ideas from romance novels. That Keenan Oakes guy didn’t worry about playing fair.”