Semiautomatic Marriage

by Leona Karr

  Feeling this urgency, Adam had spent the day laying the groundwork for more detailed scrutiny of Horizon staff and business procedures. He had arrived early enough to take a look at the shipping department while the loading doors were still closed, and no one had arrived for work yet. Since he knew that Nick wouldn’t be showing up for work that day, Adam started with his office.

  “Is there something you need?”

  Adam turned from the filing cabinets whose contents he’d been about to examine and saw Nellie standing in the doorway. He masked his surprise with a sigh of relief. “I sure do, Nellie. I decided to start with the shipping department in my survey of the company. I’m hoping to come up with some ideas on how to increase the efficiency of moving the product. By the way, how is Nick doing this morning?” he asked, deliberately shifting the subject.

  “I think he’s going to be okay. They won’t tell you much over the phone. I came in early so I could take care of a couple of things Nick was concerned about. I’ll make a run out to the hospital a little later.”

  “Good idea. Listen, my stuff can wait. I think I’ve picked up a general idea of how the department works. When Nick comes back and has some free time, he can sort things out for me. I’m betting there’re some headaches he’d like to get rid of, and I want to be of help if I can.”

  She simply nodded and then watched him as he made his way across the open area to the elevator. He couldn’t tell if Nellie had bought the bag of lies.

  The rest of the day hadn’t produced anything of immediate interest. He’d spent time making himself visible and chatting with various staff. The hours he spent on Arthur’s computer didn’t reveal any hint of what might have been there once and since erased.

  Della pointedly ignored him, and by the time four o’clock came, he felt like a swimmer who’d been battling his way upstream. He needed something to renew his energy. The truth surprised him—he needed Carolyn’s company.

  When he arrived at the mansion, he saw Lisa’s car in the garage. Letting himself into the house, he headed up the stairs to see if Carolyn was in their suite.

  The outer sitting room was empty and so was the bedroom, but when he peeked into the study, his breath caught. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, turning away from a bookcase and walking toward him. “I was looking for something to read.”

  He saw her mouth move, but the words didn’t register. The lines and curves of her body in the clinging red dress assaulted his senses. He just stared at her. If they’d been in the bedroom, he wasn’t sure what would have happened. She looked so damn alluring, tantalizing and seductive that his body instantly reacted with a hot need to claim her.

  He silently swore. He couldn’t take this kind of temptation. He’d been forcing himself to honor his commitment to her, and it was getting more difficult all the time. He sure as hell didn’t need any more enticements to push him into breaking his promise.

  “Don’t you like my new look?” she asked in an anxious tone as he just stood there, gaping at her.

  “It’s…it’s…” He searched for the right word and finally gave up. “No, I don’t. It isn’t you.”

  “Really? And what is me, exactly?” she asked testily. “Last year’s fashion? Is that what you’re saying?”

  He tried to recover from his faux pas. “I’m saying you don’t have to parade your…assets in clothes like that. It gives the wrong impression.”

  “Are you talking from a detached perspective or a personal one?” she challenged as she slowly walked toward him.

  He knew if he touched her, no amount of resolve was going to keep him from kissing her. She’d been engaging his feelings to the deepest levels from the beginning, but he’d been able to keep his desire in check because she hadn’t played into the growing attraction between them.

  When she stopped in front of him, he thought she was going to challenge his fortitude with some sexy move. Instead, she gave him a wan smile.

  “You’re right, of course. Don’t worry, Adam. This was an experiment, and Lisa was wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “She said my husband would take one look at me and carry me off to bed. I guess, maybe, I was foolishly dreaming something like that might happen—if things were different.”

  He looked into her clear blue eyes. “If things were different, something would have happened before now. You don’t need a dress like that to get my attention.”

  He made the mistake of cupping her chin with his hand, and she made only the slightest movement toward him, but it was enough. He bent his head, and kissed her gently, a surge of desire humming through him. Her lips were soft and sweet, and he silently groaned as his mouth played on hers. As her arms crept up around his neck to deepen the kiss, he finally came to himself and gently set her away from him.

  He had no business playing with her emotions at a time when she was trying to find herself. She was a millionaire, and once she was able to enjoy all the privileges that went with wealth, the world would bow at her feet. Any interest she had in him would quickly disappear. Neither spoke as they searched the other’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Carolyn,” he finally murmured. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” He grinned sheepishly. “It must be that darn dress.”

  “Doesn’t Angel wear sexy clothes?” she asked pointedly.

  “Who?” What in hell…?

  “Angel. The woman you call Angel. Please don’t deny it.”

  Shaken by his kiss and reeling with desire, Carolyn felt all her apprehension and anxiety come pouring out. It was almost as if some jealous little devil was sitting on her shoulder, prodding her. “Why couldn’t you be honest with me, Adam?”

  “It’s not what think, Carolyn. You’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  “I may have jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions,” she answered shortly. “As far as I know, you could have been feeding me nothing but lies from the moment we met. I should have taken time to investigate, but you kept saying we couldn’t waste any time. Insisting we get legally married could have been a very clever move on your part. How do I know I’m not the victim of a horrendous money scam you and Bancroft cooked up?”

  He started to answer and then held up his hand for silence. Quickly he crossed the room to the door to the hall and jerked it open.

  He peered out. The hall was empty. Several doors along the corridor stood open. He couldn’t be sure if anyone had had time to duck out of sight. Undoubtedly there was also a servants’ stairway in this wing of the house. Maybe his intuition was all wrong. It was probably the loudness of Carolyn’s voice that had triggered his apprehension.

  He closed the door and returned to Carolyn, standing there with her eyes still snapping. He couldn’t believe that a remark about a sexy dress and his calls to his superior had released a flood of unfounded suspicion. Did she really believe he might be setting her up to get his hands on her inheritance? Was this what she’d been thinking all along? And here he’d been so pleased at how harmoniously they’d been working together. He must have dropped the ball without knowing it.

  “I can explain all this, Carolyn.”

  “Please do,” she invited coolly.

  He hesitated, knowing he couldn’t identify his superior, Angelica Rivers, for his own protection and hers. It was one of the cardinal rules of the agency not to establish a trail that someone might follow from an undercover agent to another person.

  “I don’t know how much you overheard,” he began hesitantly, trying to use an effective interrogation tool to find out what the person knows.

  “I didn’t hear very much. And I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she hastened to assure him. “I simply heard you on the phone, calling someone Angel. I also know that you’ve been making calls after you thought I was asleep, and the whole thing suggests flagrant dishonesty about what you’ve told me.” She searched his face. “I can’t help asking myself why you would lie to me about not having any romantic atta
chments, unless it ties in with other lies you’ve told me. Lies that could make a total fool out of me.”

  “I haven’t told you any lies about my private life or about this situation at Horizon,” he countered firmly. He wanted to tell her that no woman had even come close to touching his heart since he’d lost Marietta. Not until now. Didn’t she realize how just being around her had made him aware of the emptiness in his life? Sometimes his outward expression of tender caring came from deep within his very being. There was little pretense in the endearments he spoke for other ears, and the kiss he’d given her had vibrated through every cell in his body. How could she question his sincerity and integrity?

  “Please believe me, Carolyn. I’ve been totally honest with you. You should have mentioned this whole ‘Angel’ thing before it festered. I assure you that my calls have not been made to a sweetheart or mistress. More than that, I cannot say until this investigation is over.”

  She blinked, as if she couldn’t believe he was finished explaining. “That’s it?”

  “Either you accept the truth of what I’m telling you or you don’t,” he said flatly. He knew better than to think he could bend her to his will if she set her mind against it. “My motivation is still the same. I just want to stop the pain and death of innocent people as quickly as I can. If you don’t believe that’s what all this is about, I can’t force you to continue. It’s a dangerous game. Are you still in, or are you out?”

  Without answering, she crossed to the couch and sat down. Leaning forward, she rested her head in her hands as if her thoughts were too heavy. She looked so fragile and vulnerable that he had to fight his impulse to go and cuddle her.

  When she finally raised her head, his heart caught in his throat. “I’m still in,” she said.

  Because his chest was too tight to express his feelings of relief, he said casually, as if nothing more important was on his mind, “Morna is expecting us for dinner. Maybe we should be on time tonight.”

  She nodded and walked past him as if they were two strangers who had somehow ended up together on a fast train to emotional disaster.

  Chapter Ten

  Dinner was a dismal affair. Buddy was the only one who showed any sign of good humor. He’d been fishing with a friend and bragged about the catch they’d made as if everyone at the table was interested in every detail. Ignoring his mother’s frown, he kept motioning for Seika to fill his wineglass.

  Carolyn decided that Della and Lisa must have had a mother-daughter confrontation just before dinner, because they weren’t speaking to each other. Jasper didn’t seem to notice anything that was going on at the table. He gave his attention to his meal and his only comment was, “The salmon seems a bit dry.”

  Adam asked Della some questions about how her day went, but only received polite, vague answers. He played the devoted husband, smiling at Carolyn and asking her if she wanted more rolls and rice pilaf, even though it should have been obvious to him that she was only picking at her food.

  Every time he brushed her arm, she tensed. The memory of his mouth seductively capturing hers lingered with poignant intensity. She was aware of his long legs inches from hers under the table, felt the magnetic draw his nearness exerted.

  The verbal confrontation they’d had after the kiss only seemed to heighten the bewildering fact that she was falling in love with him. Even though he might be telling the truth about not having any romantic attachments, he had his own agenda. For the moment she was a necessary ingredient in that agenda, but that would change. And then what? He’d be on his way to a new assignment. Once again she was leaving herself open to hurt and abandonment.

  When the excruciatingly long meal was over, Jasper surprised Carolyn by solemnly asking her to accompany him into the library. “I have something to show you.”

  His invitation didn’t include Adam, but Carolyn was grateful that he acted as if it did. He gave her a wink and a smile as he placed a hand on her arm, then guided her out of the dining room and along a spacious hallway behind Jasper’s lean figure. When Jasper turned into a large room filled with bookcases and comfortable leather furniture, they followed.

  What was Jasper’s intention? she wondered. Was he going to reveal some devastating truth about her parentage?

  Carolyn had made inquiries about pictures and information about her mother, but without success. She had never quite believed that both her mother’s father and brother could be completely in the dark about who had gotten her pregnant. Had she been raped by some stranger? Had some lowlife preyed on her innocence?

  “It’s okay,” Adam reassured her quietly as if reading her thoughts. “Remember, whatever you learn about your parentage doesn’t change who you are. You’ve already proved your stature as a very lovely, intelligent, caring human being.”

  She gave him a grateful smile as Jasper motioned for them to sit on a deep leather couch. He cleared his throat and made a big production of handing Carolyn an envelope containing old photos.

  “Most of them are of me,” Jasper confessed. “But your mother’s in some.”

  Carolyn’s hands trembled slightly as she looked at the snapshots. Jasper was the main subject of all of the photos. He was a young man in his late teens, and a child of eight or nine was either smiling or making faces in the background. My mother? Carolyn let the tip of one finger trace her mother’s pretty features, and the grin on her face. She appeared to be a happy child. What had gone wrong? Why had Alicia run away from home? And left a child unnamed and unwanted?

  “And you don’t have any pictures of her mother when she was older?” Adam asked, unable to believe that these few snapshots were all there were.

  Jasper frowned. “I don’t know what happened to the box of photographs that used to be in the library. When Della moved in, she cleaned out a whole lot of old stuff that had been lying around gathering dust. Of course, we didn’t know then what was going to happen. I mean, who would have thought that Alicia’s daughter would appear out of nowhere? It does seem unbelievable, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does,” Carolyn agreed. “I wonder what my mother would say about all this? Do you think she might be as surprised as anyone that her father left his fortune to her daughter?”

  Jasper declined to speculate and just shrugged his bony shoulders. Carolyn handed back the photos and he didn’t offer to let her keep them. He just tossed them into a desk drawer as if they were of little value.

  Adam studied Jasper. There was no softness in the blue of the man’s eyes as he looked at Carolyn, and the unfeeling expression verified what Adam had suspected all along. The man was not the detached, vague personality that he pretended to be. A deep rancor seemed to be simmering beneath Jasper’s exterior of a single-minded scientist. Adam wondered how much responsibility he bore for his sister’s unhappy life. More importantly, Adam was concerned that now Carolyn might have become the focus of that bitterness and resentment.

  Carolyn thanked her uncle politely for sharing the photos. When they left the library, she and Adam made their way to their wing of the house. She pretended a desire for an early night, and only nodded when Adam said he was going to take a little walk before turning in.

  The night air was heavy as he let himself out a side door on the ground floor. Strolling on a path around the perimeter of the house, he was conscious of the building’s enormity. The Stanford mansion was in the same class as the Vanderbilt or Astor estates. Carolyn’s inheritance had vaulted her into a position that would ensure she’d marry wealth, a man of social prestige.

  Adam scowled and kicked a small stone out of the way. A quiver of jealousy surprised him, and he had to remind himself that his challenge was to bring her safely through this investigation and bless her future happiness. As he looked up at the second-floor windows, he saw that lights were on in Della’s home office and was tempted to drop in on her for a casual chat. He knew that such a visit would be completely out of context with his undercover role; Adam knew better than to attract any kind o
f attention that could sabotage the whole investigation. Why would a new bridegroom be wandering around the house alone, instead of curled up in bed with his beautiful new wife?

  As he returned to the house, uppermost in his mind was the need to mend fences with Carolyn as quickly as possible. It was imperative that they keep the pretense intact. Fortunately everyone at dinner seemed to be too involved with their own thoughts to notice the strain between them. At least he hoped that was the case—you never knew how much a single look or a tone of voice could give away. If Carolyn was still awake when he got back to their room, they’d better have another talk.

  He was disappointed to find her in bed and apparently asleep, though he couldn’t be sure she wasn’t feigning sleep to avoid him. He sighed. First thing tomorrow, before they went down to breakfast, they’d have to set things straight between them.

  AT TWO IN THE MORNING, Carolyn awoke screaming from a recurring childhood nightmare that had come back with a vengeance. The dream had initially started after a malicious older orphan had taunted Carolyn, saying she’d been found behind a stack of wood at the foundling home. The cruel girl had even taken Carolyn out to show her the place where the logs were stacked. In her nightmare Carolyn was buried under the heavy wood, and no matter how frantically she cried and struggled to get free, someone was about to set fire to the wood logs covering her.

  Her screams instantly woke Adam, and as he reached for her across the bed, she flayed at him and kept crying.

  “Don’t burn me. Don’t burn me.” She fought him with the fierceness of a trapped animal. Her nails scratched his arms as he tried to soothe her.

  “Carolyn, wake up. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  Slowly his voice penetrated the haze in her mind, and staring at him, wide-eyed, she began to climb out of the swirling fear that had engulfed her.

  “You were dreaming. You’re all right.”

  Her breath was coming in gulps, and she could still feel the imaginary flames and the heavy weight of the wood on her. He put his arms around her and gradually she let her body slump against his.