Marriage by Mistake

by Alyssa Kress

  He'd never experienced lust this strong. Almost...out of control. Almost enough to make him do something...stupid.

  Dean hated acting like a coward, yet he'd been doing just that. A coward, he'd stayed at the office until late that first night, until he could be sure Kelly had retired to her bedroom.

  Much good that had done. He'd gone up to his solitary room and dreamed about her. Wild, erotic dreams. They'd been like nothing he'd ever experienced, the sex unlike any he'd ever had. No holds barred, skin and teeth and tongues. Animal, frantic —

  Satisfying.

  Dean drew in a deep breath. God, had it been satisfying. Too satisfying. And so he couldn't help wondering: was the dream based on memory? Had the sex between them really been that good?

  Dean's breath hissed out. No. He couldn't let himself wonder. He'd go crazy. He'd spend every waking moment scheming how to get her into bed, how to achieve that satisfaction in reality.

  He'd act like a damned fool.

  Cars and people hurried past each other on the street below. Deliberately, Dean relaxed his tight jaw. First of all, it had been a dream, not a memory. Secondly, he was his own man, heredity notwithstanding.

  He didn't have to act like a damned fool.

  Even if he might want to.

  ###

  Kelly was thrilled to find Dean's basement gym. She could stay in shape and be ready to go back to work the minute this trial period marriage was over.

  On Monday morning she jumped onto Dean's state-of-the-art equipment, ignoring the voice chattering inside her head that after four days in his house she was doing absolutely nothing about learning who 'this' Dean really was.

  It wasn't her fault, though. Dean was avoiding her. He left every morning super early and came home super late. Not her fault.

  In the plain-walled gym, Kelly pumped away on Dean's stationary bicycle. Well, all right, truth be told, she was glad Dean was avoiding her. She felt very confused about him. He was cold, disapproving, way too authoritarian. He didn't even like her.

  And yet — and yet — she couldn't help feeling there was something there, some thing —

  On the stationary bicycle, Kelly shook her head. What was there was pure lust, a simple physical attraction. She wanted it to be more than that. God knew, she missed the man she'd married, but a girl had to face reality.

  He wasn't there. In fact, he'd never been 'there.'

  Kelly worked out for two solid hours, really getting into it every time she started wondering about 'her' Dean again. Finally, exhausted, she wiped her face, threw the towel around her neck, then used one last burst of energy to hop up the stairs.

  A light flickered from an open door on the second floor hall. Sounds of explosions drifted forth. Panting from her jog up the stairs, Kelly stalked down the wood paneled hall to investigate.

  Past the open doorway, Robby sat cross-legged on a carpeted floor. His tongue peeked out of one corner of his mouth as he concentrated on his joystick and a TV screen. Toys littered the room beyond him, the windows of which were covered by a set of heavy curtains.

  Kelly crossed her arms over her chest and leaned one shoulder against the door jamb. She hadn't ignored Dean's little brother, but she hadn't sought him out, either. It seemed best not to rock that boat. Though, darn it, she wanted to.

  Look at the kid. His every brain cell was concentrated on what Kelly could now see was a battle between chaps-wearing cowboys and scantily clad women. Both sides were armed to the teeth. Kelly dabbed her still-dewing forehead with her towel. This was not right. A child shouldn't be spending his time this way, self-absorbed and sedentary. "Hey," she heard herself say.

  There was no answer to this greeting. Just a kapow from the TV set, followed by the sound of shattering.

  Kelly drew her thumb along her lower lip. Yes, the boy needed attention, but if she gave him any, it would only make trouble for her in an already difficult situation.

  Kelly bit her thumb. On the other hand, what was more important: taking care of her own comfort, or helping another in need? Kelly straightened from the door jamb. She spoke again, louder. "Hey!"

  Robby started. Instead of an explosion from the TV set, there was a thud. He turned, looking outraged. "For the love of — ! Oh, it's you." His look of outrage turned to something bashful. It was all the confirmation Kelly needed that she was right to interfere. "Uh, hi," Robby said.

  "So." Kelly skirted a field of checker squares as she approached Robby. "Good game?"

  "It sucks." Robby's attention drifted back to the TV set. His fingers crept toward his joystick.

  "But you've got a good score there." At least Kelly thought the numbers lit at the right of the screen represented a score, and it looked high.

  Robby shrugged. "I've had plenty of time to practice, since I got expelled."

  Expelled? "Oh." Kelly cleared her throat. She hadn't realized...though she supposed she could have guessed. He should have been in school. "Uh, what happened?"

  Instead of answering he started pushing the button of his joystick. Explosions burst onto the TV screen. Then, abruptly, he admitted, "I ran away."

  Kelly thought of the recent tree house business and wondered just how ingrained this habit was. "Oh."

  Robby turned to glare at her. "I hate living in a dorm. With a roommate. Roommates are the worst."

  Kelly's eyes blinked wide. A roommate? Why, that meant boarding school. Good heavens, he was only nine. They were already farming him out to boarding school? Not giving him a family life?

  "Um..." Since Kelly didn't dare express the outrage she was suddenly feeling on Robby's behalf, she switched back to her original goal. Expelled or not, Robby needed something social and constructive to do. "I...well, listen," she said. "If you're bored with the video game, then...see, I am so bored, too, and desperate to get out of here. Would you — ?"

  "What?" Robby sat up straight. He stared at her, little-boy appalled. "You're going to leave? Already?"

  Kelly was taken aback by his expression of distress. "Well — "

  "You can't leave," Robby stated.

  "Anywhere?" Kelly blinked.

  "No. I made a bet with Troy that Dean could keep you at least two weeks."

  Kelly's jaw dropped.

  Robby jumped to his feet. "Look, I know he seems a drag, all stuffy and 'should' and 'shouldn't'-ing, but he's a straight-up guy, you know. Always there when you need him."

  "...Always there."

  "Right. Like when they kicked me out of school. Dad was nowhere to be found but Dean came to get me." Robby's gaze skittered sideways. "He always does."

  Kelly spoke very slowly. "I'm...not leaving Dean." At least not yet, she added silently to herself. At the same time, she thought: Robby and Troy had made a bet? And Troy hadn't thought Dean could keep her two weeks?

  Robby visibly relaxed. "Good. I mean, not even my Dad has had a marriage that lasted less than two weeks."

  Kelly stared at him. Was that so? "Yes, well." Carefully, she cleared her throat. "All I'm asking is to get out of the house. You know, like to a park."

  "A park?" Robby's look of relief changed to one of bewilderment.

  "Yeah. Grass, trees, maybe a swing set or a baseball diamond, you know the kind of place."

  Robby looked even more bewildered. "You don't have to go anywhere for that. We have it all here."

  Kelly rolled her eyes. "You do not have everything here." Like other boys to play with, for one thing. "Let's ask Jackson."

  Kelly put Robby's bet and his disconcerting description of Dean out of her mind as she located Jackson and talked him into driving them to the nearest public recreation facility. Her goal was to get Robby doing something worthwhile, outdoors and physical. But in the car, luxuriously ensconced in the back seat, Kelly found the Dean problem return to mind.

  Always there when you need him. Was that the flip side of Dean's heavy authoritarianism, that he was always there when you needed him, totally reliable?

>   She felt peculiar even considering the question, so she latched onto Troy and Robby's bet, instead. They assumed she wasn't going to stay with Dean. Rather, they assumed Dean wasn't going to be able to keep her.

  Just like his father couldn't keep any of his wives.

  Kelly chewed on a finger and stared out the car window at the pristine country estates flowing by. Wives, plural. Very plural, if Kelly'd understood correctly. She wondered if 'wives' was the way things had been in Dean's youth, too. Had a succession of stepmothers passed through his childhood?

  I know a lot about this type of situation he'd told her. Kelly frowned and kept chewing her finger. Had Dean given his boyish heart to one after another of his father's multiple brides? Was that what made him now so cold? Why he'd warned Kelly away from Robby?

  In the car, Kelly lowered her bit finger. All right, so maybe Dean had had a lousy childhood, a lonely one. That didn't make up for his arrogant and unfriendly manner. He was a big boy now. He chose how he behaved.

  But it could explain some things. Yes, Kelly had to admit, looking out the window. It could explain a lot.

  ###

  The sun was high, the sky was blue, and the ball Troy sent over the tennis net whizzed with vicious accuracy to a corner just beyond his opponent.

  "For the love of — You killed me. Again!" Emery Stanford Hunsington, III, panted as he turned to watch the ball bounce from the carefully maintained Club tennis court and fly into the fence. "That's game and match," he groaned, but he smiled ruefully as he came up to the net to shake Troy's hand.

  "It was just good luck," Troy replied. He was always modest about tennis, even though he spent enough time and effort on the game to deserve the number of wins he collected every week at the Club.

  Lately, he'd been spending even more time at the Club than usual. It was too hard to hang around the house, watching Kelly get ignored by Dean.

  Now Emery shook his head of thinning blond hair. "If that was luck, then you ought to go to Vegas."

  Troy's easy smile faltered. He retrieved it quickly, however, before the other man could guess he'd rippled Troy's equanimity. "Maybe," he agreed. "Maybe I should do just that."

  Emery jogged off toward the showers, running late for some board meeting or other. Troy, who had nowhere to be late to, followed at a more leisurely rate, strolling down the hedge-bounded walkway and thinking about Las Vegas and the marriage his cousin, Dean, had entered into there. As far as Troy could tell, that marriage was going exactly where he'd predicted: south, and in a big hurry.

  It was too bad, really. Having gotten to know Kelly a little over the past few days, Troy was starting to like her. She was nice, she was genuine, she was...all right. She could probably warm up that cold house of theirs. But Dean? Oh, Dean had the vision of a mole sometimes.

  Troy reached the end of the hedge-bordered path where the courtyard opened in front of the gym and showers. He idly gazed down the path that led to the other set of tennis courts. There, as if thinking about Dean could conjure the woman, was Felicia. Felicia, wearing a blindingly pink tank top and a short, white tennis skirt. Though she walked toward the gym, indicating that she, too, had just finished a match of tennis, she looked cool and unruffled, without a hair out of place or a drop of sweat. She strode toward the courtyard with the walk debutantes practiced and she had perfected; cool, refined grace, entirely stripped of the sexual.

  Troy scuffed to a halt. He felt an instantaneous, and unfortunately familiar, urge to heat up and ruffle her. He'd like to see a few of her silky blond hairs out of place. He would absolutely love to see her sweat. And look sexual.

  His response to her made no earthly sense. The woman was interested in Dean, for heaven's sake. Why was Troy attracted to a woman who was not only a do-gooding, whip-cracking ice queen, but who preferred Dean?

  He didn't know the answer, he only knew how hard it was to drag his gaze up from her long, thoroughbred legs. "Felicia," he said, since she was nearly in front of him and some kind of salutation was required.

  "Troy." Her tone could have frosted a volcano. But still, it was somehow polite. Felicia could do that, put you in your place while skirting the correct side of good manners.

  The problem was that the more politely frosted she got, the hotter Troy became. And the angrier. He didn't want to be turned on by her. Curving his lips into an insolent smile, he balanced his tennis racket on his shoulder. Then he did what he usually did with Felicia: got mean.

  "Fancy meeting you here," he drawled. "I would have thought you'd be too busy to play tennis during the day, what with all those heartbreakingly good works you do." He swept his gaze from the bright pink curve of her breasts to those long, slender legs. "But I suppose we have to keep our girlish figure somehow."

  Felicia's eyes were snapping when Troy looked up again, just as he'd planned. Her ice looked, for a minute, hot.

  If only he didn't like her looking hot so much, this conversation might not go the way all of them did. Asinine.

  Meanwhile, she recovered her sang-froid quickly, calming the heat in her eyes and giving Troy a brilliant smile. "A healthy life is a balanced one." She rested her tennis racket on her shoulder, mirroring Troy. "Which reminds me, since you mentioned good works, I wanted to talk to Dean about the Boston Family Aid Foundation. We need to hire a professional fundraiser. If you get a chance — " Felicia's casual smile widened — "will you ask him to call me?"

  Troy squinted. Yep, it was going asinine, and she wasn't helping. She knew damn well he wasn't going to be her messenger boy. "Why can't you call him yourself?"

  "I have." Felicia's wide smile dimmed. "But I haven't been able to get through to him."

  Troy's eyebrows jumped. "No!"

  Swiftly, Felicia commenced damage control. "Oh, I'm sure he's just fabulously busy, running that huge, multi-national corporation of his." She was smiling again, and twirling her tennis racket on her shoulder. "You know, the one in the building downtown with his name on it?"

  "Yeah, I know the one." Surely she wasn't trying to get his goat with that? Troy wasn't jealous of Dean's big company. "Even if Dean is so busy in his big building, he still should have returned at least one of your half a dozen phone calls," Troy insisted.

  Felicia's twirling tennis racket halted. "I did not call him half a dozen times."

  "Only four or five then?" Troy laughed.

  Oh, he'd done it, then. Troy could practically see smoke streaming out of her nostrils. He might have enjoyed the sight more if it didn't stir him so, down below. He lowered his tennis racket and grasped it, two-handed, in front of himself.

  "On second thought," Felicia said, eyes blazing and voice more frosty than ever. "Perhaps it isn't Dean I should be speaking to about the fundraising job. Perhaps it is you."

  "Me?" Now, that came from left field. Troy's name and the word "job" were never linked together. "What are you talking about?"

  "You know..." Felicia's eyes were sparkling dangerously now. "You'd be perfect for it."

  "For a job?" Troy choked.

  "That's right." Felicia resumed twirling her tennis racket. "You have all the necessary skills, in abundance. You're outgoing and even charming, in a sleazy sort of way. You know all the right people and — " Her smile turned positively wicked. "And you have extensive experience in convincing people to part with their cash."

  Troy could feel his face redden. He didn't borrow money from his friends...very often. Needless to say, he'd never put the touch on Felicia. "Gee, thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass." Thank goodness that had come out just right. Casual and a little snotty.

  But she didn't seem to care. Still smiling malevolently, she shrugged and started to turn away, toward the women's part of the gym. Troy had the unhappy feeling she'd just won this match, or would, if he didn't manage to one-up her.

  "Oh, Felicia?" Troy called.

  Still smiling, she stopped.

  Troy smiled back at her. "Actually, it just occurred to me... I mi
ght have an idea why Dean hasn't managed to return any of your calls."

  Felicia raised a questioning, haughty eyebrow.

  Troy felt a surge of impending triumph. He'd been holding his ammunition, deeming it unsporting to discharge, but she'd asked for it. "See, the fact is it'd be kinda hard for Dean to call his former lady friends, even one so very close as yourself...since he just got married."

  Felicia's face froze. It simply went on pause; smile, haughtily arched eyebrow and all. The only thing that changed was its color as the blood seemed to drain from her skin. If Troy had hit her with his tennis racket, he couldn't have achieved the shock he now saw evident in her very attempt to disguise it. Clear proof, assuming he'd doubted, of how deeply Felicia was infatuated with Dean.

  "Married?" she finally asked. Troy could tell she'd meant to say the word in a normal tone, but it came out in a whisper.

  He sank his weight onto one hip, somehow hanging onto his smile though he wasn't feeling so triumphant any more. "Yeah, he got married about a week ago. Nice lady." Which was true, Troy told himself. Kelly was a nice lady, even if it was unlikely she was going to remain Dean's wife much longer.

  God, he hadn't had to tell Felicia this news. What had gotten into him?

  Meanwhile, Felicia was doing an admirable job of retrieving her self-possession. "A week ago," she said, and cleared her throat. From somewhere she produced a parlor-room smile. "Why, then, you must give him my congratulations. What a — ahem — Why, what a wonderful thing for him. Married!"

  Troy crushed his teeth together. He'd been a pig, as usual, and she was rising to the occasion, saying the right things, in the right way. "Yeah," he said, once he managed to pry his jaw apart. "I'll give him your message."

  With one last, utterly appropriate smile, Felicia turned and strode into the women's locker room. High class all the way.

  Troy swiveled to slash his racket at an innocent hedge. He hadn't intended to open his trap. What was it about the woman that brought out the absolute worst in him? He scowled at the hedge and wondered what it could be.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A disturbing report brought Dean home in time for dinner. He'd called Maggie, the housekeeper, from the office to check in, and could scarcely believe what she'd told him. Kelly knew exactly what Dean thought about her spending time with Robby.