His Marriage Bonus

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  For that reason alone, Mitch could see Lauren expected him to back out. But it wasn’t her father Mitch was trying to please—it was Lauren. He closed the distance between them in two quick strides. He cupped his hands around her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Your father isn’t involved in what goes on between you and me behind closed doors. Is he?”

  “Well, no,” Lauren allowed as she raked her teeth across her delectably soft and full lower lip.

  Then that settled it as far as Mitch was concerned. Mitch shrugged, aware he had never wanted to spend time with a woman as much as he wanted to spend time with Lauren. “Then for tonight anyway it’s just the two of us,” he said.

  “I DON’T KNOW about this,” Lauren said as soon as they got back from their errands an hour and a half later and made a beeline for the hidden room, which appeared—to their mutual relief—to have been undisturbed in their absence.

  Mitch switched on the baby monitor and then knelt to place it beneath the chaise lounge, well out of sight. “How else are we going to know who’s coming in here, and when? We already established if the intruders hear our voices inside the hidden room, they won’t come on in.”

  Lauren shrugged again. “We could set up a hidden video camera.”

  “Good idea. If we don’t catch anyone trespassing tonight, we’ll get one first thing tomorrow. Until then, a baby monitor it is.” He took her by the hand and led her from the room.

  By mutual agreement, they collected their packages and went quietly up to the second floor, to the spacious bedroom Lauren had claimed as hers. Lauren set the other half of the baby monitor, the listening component, on the fireplace mantle, and turned it on also.

  “Sitting, dining and bedroom in one,” Mitch said as he carried the sacks of food to the table and four chairs that were set up in front of the fireplace. With effort, he kept his eyes away from the bed where they had made love earlier. “I hate to say it, but it almost looks like you could be comfortable here while the renovations are under way.”

  Lauren had her back to the rumpled covers on the bed, too, even though that meant sitting right next to, instead of opposite, Mitch at the table. “Believe me, there’s no place I’d rather be than right here while the renovations are going on,” she said determinedly, looking happy to talk—and think—about anything but the intimate turn their relationship had taken. Lauren opened a bottle of springwater and poured some into paper cups, while Mitch ladled Charleston crab cakes and coleslaw onto paper plates. She smiled warmly as she related in a low, honest tone, “There’s nothing more exciting than seeing a wreck of a house transformed into a showplace before your very eyes.”

  Mitch could see how that would be very satisfying. He regarded Lauren curiously, admiring her ability to “rough it” every bit as much as her ability to visualize—and then bring about—success, in both her business and personal life. “Have you renovated every home you’ve purchased?”

  “Yes.” Color swept Lauren’s cheeks, making her look even prettier. She handed Mitch a buttermilk biscuit and tore open a packet of strawberry jam. “At first I did it because it was economically feasible. I wanted a home of my own in the historic district and all I could afford was a fixer-upper. But once I realized how much fun it was to buy something in need of tender loving care and bring it back to life, that’s the only kind of property I have purchased.”

  “How many have you bought and lived in so far?”

  “This is my fifth place. And hopefully my last, at least as far as my own residences are concerned. I think I’ll still fix up properties, but just for resale.”

  “It’s an awfully big place.” Mitch broke open a biscuit. “Twenty-four rooms.”

  Lauren shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’ll put my realty office downstairs. That’ll take up a couple of rooms at the very front of the house.”

  It was going to take more than Lauren’s business to fill up the mansion with the kind of joie de vivre it deserved. “And the rest?” Mitch asked curiously.

  She grinned as she cut into a moist and fluffy crab cake laced with spices. “I’ll probably fill them with children.”

  Mitch noted she hadn’t said anything about a husband. Or getting married. He figured he could change her mind about that, because if there was any woman who should be married to a man who really loved and cared for her, it was Lauren. “How many children?”

  “I don’t know.” Lauren’s dark brown eyes sparkled charmingly. “Maybe three or four or five.”

  Mitch thought about his own family life, growing up. Boisterous hadn’t begun to describe it. “Four is a good number,” he said.

  “Any number is fine, just so long as it’s more than one.” Lauren’s eyes darkened unhappily as she related, “It’s lonely growing up without any brothers or sisters.”

  Mitch nodded, understanding her regret about that. “I imagine that’s so,” he lamented quietly. He didn’t know what he would have done after his parents’ divorce if he hadn’t had his siblings.

  Lauren studied him over the rim of her paper cup, her eyes darkening with compassion. “You count on your siblings, don’t you?”

  Mitch nodded. “I don’t know how we would have made it through the hard times without each other.”

  She sighed wistfully as she forked up the last of her fries. “You’re very lucky.”

  “You could be lucky, too.” Mitch opened the box containing their lemon meringue pie.

  “It’s a little too late for siblings, Mitch.”

  “Maybe by birth,” Mitch allowed as he served them both a generous piece, “but you could always get them by marriage.”

  Lauren caught her breath at the determined look he gave her. She paused, put her fork down and sat back in her chair. “What are you saying, Mitch?” she asked cautiously.

  Mitch reached across the table and took her hand. “That maybe your father’s idea of hooking us up together wasn’t so far-fetched after all.” He could see them dating long after the week ended. He could even see them getting serious about each other. Serious enough to marry. Serious enough for Lauren to become a real part of the Deveraux family.

  Unfortunately, Mitch noted, his feelings weren’t shared by Lauren.

  A panicked look on her face, Lauren withdrew her hand and stood. “I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in an arranged relationship with anyone.”

  “That was four dates ago,” Mitch reminded her as he too pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

  “Three and three-quarters,” Lauren corrected, swallowing hard, “and the decision still stands.”

  Mitch surveyed her, head to toe, victoriously taking in her flushed face, trembling body and quickened breathing. “Tell me that after you make love with me again,” he said softly, “and I’ll believe you.”

  Until then he was determined to show her how wonderful their lives could be, if she proved as trustworthy as he hoped. His pulse racing, Mitch took Lauren into his arms and threaded his hand through her hair. Before he could so much as kiss her again, however, they heard a sound, like a door opening and closing, coming from the speaker on the baby monitor.

  It was followed by a woman’s voice.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Oh, Douglas,” the soft cultured voice murmured over the one-way transmitter as Lauren and Mitch stared at the baby monitor on the fireplace mantel. “I knew we’d be found out eventually, but…I so did not want this to happen,” the woman finished wistfully.

  There was a rustling sound, the sound of something opening and closing. The door again. And then only silence.

  Mitch muttered an oath as he released Lauren and dashed toward the door to her bedroom. Lauren had a few choice words to say as she, too, made a run for the staircase. Together, they barreled through the hall to the library, hitting light switches as they went. Mitch reached the bookcase first, and pushed the hidden lever. The door swung open. To Lauren’s acute disappointment, the lovers’ hideaway was as empty as it had been e
arlier in the day. Mitch dashed across the room, hit the second lever and rushed out into the tunnel, Lauren hard on his heels. To no avail. There was no one in the overgrown formal garden, no one in the alley, no one walking or running or hiding along Gathering Street that they could see.

  Lauren swore again and paused, still breathing hard, her hands on her hips, as they looked up and down the moonlit street. “Maybe they left a clue,” she said, sprinting back around the house, toward the secret room.

  “We can only hope,” Mitch said as he jogged alongside her.

  But to their dismay, there were no clues as to who had been there, or why.

  “The intruder took the flowers she left earlier,” Lauren noted.

  “And something else, too,” Mitch said grimly as he methodically searched through the heavy steamer trunk. “The packet of love letters between Eleanor Deveraux and Captain Nyquist are gone.”

  Lauren sat down on the chaise, still struggling to catch her breath. “What are your aunt Winnifred and your father going to say when they found out we lost them?” she asked, already regretting their carelessness. They knew they’d had an intruder. They should have anticipated something like this would happen and taken care to safeguard the letters!

  “Truthfully…” Mitch shrugged, and paused. “They probably won’t be nearly as interested in what happened to the old letters as they will be in the turn our relationship has taken.”

  Lauren flushed at the unexpected temerity of Mitch’s remark. She knew she and Mitch had behaved impetuously. There had been no helping it. She had never felt as spellbound by a man or as caught up in the moment as she had when they had ardently made love earlier that evening. And though she knew they shouldn’t have crossed that barrier when they knew this was just an arranged courtship that was bound to end, and end soon, due to their very different feelings on love and marriage, she couldn’t quite make herself regret the intimacy. Mitch might think a relationship between a man and a woman should be run as efficiently and cerebrally as a business, but for a time anyway, he had been as caught up in the passion as she.

  “They’re not going to know about that,” Lauren told Mitch determinedly. Because if their families found out, they would read all sorts of things in the liaison that just weren’t there. Like love. And the possibility of a real and enduring marriage.

  Mitch’s sexy smile broadened even more. A knowing gleam appeared in his ocean-blue eyes. Looking impossibly handsome he leaned forward, his hands clasped between his spread knees. “You don’t think they’ll guess when they see the two of us together?”

  That was the problem. Lauren knew they would. “Our making love was a mistake, Mitch.”

  It had made her think that a relationship between the two of them was not just possible but probable. And thinking that way was delusional.

  Mitch grasped her hand and tugged her onto his lap. “Do you really believe that?” he asked gently, lacing both hands around her waist. “Or are you just upset because your father knew what was going to happen between us before you did?”

  Lauren sighed. “He didn’t predict what happened earlier, Mitch.” If her father knew how impetuously she had behaved, Lauren was certain he would disapprove.

  “Sure he did.” Mitch tightened his arms around her and held her in place when she attempted to vault off his lap. Looking deep into her eyes, Mitch continued, “Your dad knew there would be sparks. And he knew if we spent any amount of time together that those sparks would ignite into a full-blown flame. You just don’t like the fact that he was right and we weren’t.”

  Lauren’s shoulders stiffened in indignation. “What are you saying?” she demanded hotly. “That you didn’t expect us to make love, either?”

  Mitch shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m a planner, Lauren. I don’t do anything without considering the pros and cons very carefully. And yet tonight…when I held you in my arms…I stopped thinking, planning, weighing what would or would not work to best advantage, and just went with what I was feeling at that moment. I wanted you, Lauren,” he murmured, looking deep into her eyes. “More than I’ve ever wanted any woman.”

  That was true for her, too, Lauren conceded reluctantly to herself. For a few brief minutes, they had both been swept away—Mitch by physical need, she by her feelings for him. But prior to that, Mitch had courted her every night, at her father’s explicit instructions, merely as a means to an end. A business end! She couldn’t forget that, Lauren reminded herself sternly, any more than she could forget what Mitch Deveraux had told her at the outset. Mitch believed, as her father did, that a marriage could and should be run like a business arrangement in order to be successful. Whereas, all she wanted was passion and romance and love, the feeling that she, and their marriage, mattered above all else. That was not likely to happen with a businessman like Mitch, no matter how gentle and considerate a lover he was. Lauren flattened her hands against the solid wall of his chest and pushed herself off his lap. “Wanting someone and belonging with them are two very different things,” Lauren announced icily as she turned on her heel and exited the secret room.

  Mitch caught up with her in the adjacent library and moved to block her way. “You’re telling me what just happened meant nothing at all to you?” he demanded, standing with his legs braced apart, his arms folded in front of him.

  That was the problem, Lauren thought. It meant everything to her. But she knew he did not feel the same, even if he wanted the physical passion between them to continue.

  She wished she could lock him out as easily as she could lock her doors. But it wasn’t happening. He was getting into her heart despite her best efforts to keep him at arm’s length emotionally. Lauren swallowed hard. “I’m telling you it’s past midnight, Mitch. And our date is over,” she said in a voice that was not to be denied. She looked him straight in the eye. “The danger is gone. And I want you out.”

  “YOU’RE BACK,” Mitch said to his father late the following afternoon.

  Tom Deveraux walked into Mitch’s office at Deveraux Shipping Company. He was impeccably groomed as always and dressed in his customary business attire of a light blue cotton shirt, dark suit and tie. But there were circles under his eyes and a new haggardness in his face that made Mitch realize his father was—for whatever reason—under tremendous strain again.

  “I’m still not caught up on all my e-mail yet, but I heard you wanted to see me,” Tom said.

  Wondering again just what it was that would keep his very business-oriented father from even looking at his own e-mail for the past couple of days, Mitch picked up a folder from his desk and handed it over. “I have some preliminary facts and figures on what it would take to put up a minimum e-commerce site for the company. I’d like you to at least look at the proposal and think about it. And I’ve prepared a second proposal, for a merger of Deveraux-Heyward. I’d like you to look at it also, and really think how our two firms could benefit if we joined forces.”

  Tom frowned, looking even less receptive to the idea than before. He sat down on the edge of Mitch’s desk, still cradling the folder in his hands. “You know how I feel. Doing business over the Internet robs you of the personal relationships with your customers. It all becomes very impersonal, and then there’s no loyalty to any one shipper. In the short run, it may not be a problem, but in the long run,” Tom predicted sternly, “it will be.”

  Mitch stood and moved restlessly to the window overlooking Charleston harbor. “Look, Dad, I know you grew up doing business that way.”

  “And so did my father and his father,” Tom said as he too looked at the container ships being unloaded as they spoke. “It’s a proven, time-honored way of providing services, Mitch. Not to mention that if we switched a big portion of our business to e-commerce, we’d have to let a lot of our sales force go.”

  That problem, Mitch realized in frustration, was one he had no answer for. A lot of the sales force had worked for the company for years.

  “I don’t want to pink-slip th
ose people, Mitch,” Tom continued.

  “Neither do I,” Mitch agreed sincerely.

  Tom shrugged. “Then…?”

  “I’ll work on that aspect of it,” Mitch promised.

  Tom joined Mitch at the window and looked at him, man to man. “I appreciate the work you’re doing here, son. And I’ve read some of the articles in the trades lately that portend e-commerce as the real future of the shipping industry, but I think they’re missing the point on one thing. The primary component of e-commerce is price not quality of service. I think customers will continue to pay more for quality of service if they know that when they ship with Deveraux their goods get there on time, in prime condition. That’s not the case with a lot of these cut-rate firms.”

  Mitch nodded and went back to his desk. He sat down behind his computer and printed a few more pages for his father to look at. “I agree. However, our latest marketing research shows that although only five percent of business is done through e-commerce today, in three years fifty percent of business will be done over the Web. The same data shows that if the Deveraux and Heyward shipping companies don’t shift to e-business in that time span, that at least one, or maybe both of them, will be out of business.”

  Tom continued to pace Mitch’s office. “You’re sure about this?”

  Mitch grabbed the papers out of the laser printer and handed them to his father. “Dad, I’ve run the figures every way I can think of—the result is the same.”

  “Which is why you’re pushing so hard for a merger,” Tom concluded.

  Mitch nodded, glad his father was finally willing to hear him out instead of dismissing the idea outright. Mitch leaned back in his swivel chair. “There’s a new generation of container ships coming out that are bigger, faster, more fuel efficient. They’re more automated and they require smaller crews. Payton Heyward added two of them to his fleet last spring.”

  “And in the process may have overextended his company,” Tom pointed out.