Wife for a Day

by Patti Berg

  Sam nodded as Lauren walked slowly to the doorway. She stepped over the threshold, then turned around. A smile radiated on her face. “Do you like ice sculptures?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Well, I have the perfect one in mind for your wedding.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. You and Jack on top of a stallion. It’ll be perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  Absolutely perfect? Sam laughed to herself as she downed the rest of her wine. Absolutely perfect would be if they were really engaged, if Jack loved her and she loved him, but the whole thing was a farce. A sham. An out-and-out lie.

  And none of her crazy dreams, none of her wishful imaginings, could make it be something different.

  fifteen

  The clouds had gone, and the stars and a full moon brightened the night. It was nearly eight, but not too late for a ride.

  Jack led Diablo and Pecos, the horse he’d ridden for half his life, out of the barn. “I’m going out to the west pasture to bring in an Appaloosa for Arabella,” Jack told Beau, tearing the boy’s attention away from the fence post he was lassoing. “Want to go with me?”

  “Wouldn’t you prefer being with Arabella?”

  A simple yes or no answer would have been fine, but Jack had already learned that wasn’t the kind of response a teenage boy liked to give. “What I want is to go for a ride. Besides, Lauren’s got Arabella cornered in the bathroom.”

  “Is she crying again?”

  “Off and on.”

  “Probably a good thing you split. I always hated it when my grandma would cry. She’d do it when she was watching TV, or fixing dinner, or reading a birthday card. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “Yeah, but it’s kind of nice when the woman you love starts to cry and all she wants is for you to hold her. Just remember one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t try to offer solutions. Don’t say things will get better. Do that and those tears will turn to anger.”

  “What do you do when they get angry?”

  A grin touched Jack’s face. “Kiss them.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For starters.” It didn’t always work, but it sometimes left them so dumbfounded—like when he’d kissed Sam in the bathtub—that they couldn’t utter another word.

  Jack grabbed the rope from Beau’s hands. “So, are you gonna go ridin’ with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Beau swung up on the back of Diablo and Jack wasted no time riding away from the ranch. He liked the feel of Pecos’s steady lope through the snow and the brisk night air burning his face. In the distance he could hear the coyotes, and when they passed a stream lined with cottonwood, he heard the faint hoot of an owl.

  They’d been riding nearly half an hour when Beau slowed his horse and Pecos matched Diablo’s pace.

  “I like it here at night,” Beau said, resting his hands on the saddle horn. “In LA all we could hear was traffic and sirens. Sometimes you couldn’t even hear yourself think.” He was silent a moment, listening to the sounds around him. “I never could understand why my grandpa didn’t like it here.”

  “He liked it once,” Jack said. “I remember when he first opened his practice in town. A bunch of us made bets on how long he’d stay.”

  “Why?”

  “One winter’s about all most greenhorns can stand, then they hightail it back to where they came from. Your grandpa didn’t seem to mind the cold all that much.

  “So why did he leave?”

  He took a moment to answer. “I guess he figured LA would be a better place to raise you.”

  “Did he leave before or after my mom died?”

  “After.”

  “Grandpa never wanted to talk about my mom. You don’t either,” Beau said, turning slightly in his saddle and looking at Jack. “Why?”

  Jack sighed, and watched his breath fog the air. “Some memories are better left alone.”

  “Is that fair to me?”

  Jack reined his horse to a stop. “I suppose not.” He stared at the stars for the longest time, then looked at his son. “I loved your mother.”

  “That’s not the impression I got from my grandpa. I thought you were a one-night stand.”

  He shook his head. “I was young and wild and she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. We used to talk about our future together. I wanted to rodeo, travel from town to town—as long as Beth would go with me. That kind of life sounded glamorous at the time, at least to me. Your mom had other ideas, though. She wanted me to build a cabin somewhere on the ranch. She wanted a white picket fence, and she wanted to plant flowers. On top of that, she wanted us to have lots of kids.” Jack laughed. “The last thing I was thinking about at sixteen was being a father. That’s when I first learned how big a difference there is between girls and guys.”

  “I think I figured it out when I was about eight.”

  Jack chuckled low, and when he spotted the Appaloosa he’d been searching for, he galloped across the prairie with Beau following behind. Jack slipped a bridle and a lead rein on Belle, gave her an apple, then headed back for the ranch.

  “Think you’d like to run a spread like this someday?” Jack asked Beau.

  “I have a lot to learn before I could do something like that.”

  “I hadn’t planned on giving it to you in the next day or two. I was thinking more like twenty years from now, when I’m ready to sit on the sidelines and let someone else do most of the work.”

  Beau was silent for far too long. “Why would you want to give the place to me?”

  “You’re the only son I’ve got. This place has always belonged to a Remington, and you’re the only one in my will.”

  “My name’s Morris, not Remington.”

  Jack aimed his gaze at his son. “You’re a Remington. I don’t much care what your last name is.”

  Beau seemed to mull that over for a while. If Jack had his way, he’d have Beau’s name changed tomorrow. But that was a decision the boy would have to make, not him.

  “What if you have other kids?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ll always be my first.”

  Beau grew silent again, but Jack watched him from the corner of his eye, and in the moonlight he could see the muscles tensing in his jaw.

  Jack reined Pecos in front of Diablo and came to a stop. “Something troubling you?”

  Beau nodded. “You didn’t put me in your will thinking that would make up for getting rid of me, did you?”

  “No.” Jack laughed uncomfortably, took off his Stetson, and ran his fingers through his hair. After readjusting his hat, he scuffed his hand across the day’s growth of beard on his chin. “Well, maybe,” he said, keeping his eyes on Beau’s face, “I never did feel right about what I did.”

  “Why didn’t you make an attempt to see me?”

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  Jack remembered that day full well. He remembered the sweat on his palms, the tightness in his chest, and his desperate need to hold his little boy. “It was your fourth birthday,” he told Beau. “Your grandparents were having a party for you at the LA Zoo.”

  “I remember that. Sort of. But I don’t remember you.”

  “I don’t imagine you would. I stood under a tree watching you open your presents.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the party? Why didn’t you come to see me any other time?”

  “I made a promise to your grandparents that I wouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wouldn’t have made a very good dad.”

  “That’s it? No other explanation?”

  Jack shook his head. “That’s it.”

  “Well, that’s one hell of a reason.”

  Beau kicked Diablo’s flanks and took off across the pasture.

  He hated to see the boy so angry, but if he knew the truth, that his grandfather had refused to let Jack see the boy, that he’d promised a messy court bat
tle if Jack tried to get custody, Beau would resent his grandparents, and Jack didn’t want that. They’d done their best for Beau, and they’d done enough suffering after Beth was killed.

  If Beau had anyone to resent, it was his dad.

  Jack showered and shaved in the bathroom downstairs. He always kept a set of clothes in the room off the kitchen because he never knew when he might be too dirty to walk through the house. It was tough enough keeping the place clean without trailing mud from room to room.

  The house had been quiet when he and Beau returned from their ride. The lights were off in his bedroom and bath, and he figured Sam had already gone to sleep. He wondered if she was in his bed or if she’d curled up in the big chair in front of the fireplace. Hell, he’d never even built the fire he’d promised.

  He’d sure been making a mess of things. Beau was angry with him, too, and after their ride, he’d gone storming up to his room, silent and hurt.

  He tried not to think about Beau’s justified anger. Instead, he tried to put that anger into perspective. Beau was learning about the past and accepting it one piece at a time.

  Jack closed the bathroom door and went to his office. He told himself that he’d neglected his work far too long.

  Ah, hell, that was just an excuse. He didn’t want to go to his bedroom and see Sam lying in bed. He didn’t want to think about his feelings for her, especially when she stomped on them every time he turned around.

  He pulled a stack of faxes from the machine and quickly scanned their contents. His partner had sent details for a new advertising campaign. An architect had sent interior sketches for the five new restaurants in Houston and Dallas, and…

  Jack rested his hip against the edge of the desk and stared at the fax from Wes Haskins, the investigator he’d asked to check on Samantha Jones.

  Damn! He’d meant to call Wes and tell him to forget the whole thing. If there was something more to know about Sam, something not so good, he didn’t want to find out.

  He crumpled the fax and tossed it into the trash, then thumbed through the rest of the correspondence.

  Sitting down at his desk, he ripped open the mail that had arrived earlier in the day. He studied a profit and loss statement, then thumbed through the pages of Horse & Rider magazine, but the wadded piece of paper stared up at him from the trash.

  He’d wondered for weeks if Sam was in some kind of trouble. Maybe Wes’s report shed some light on why she’d needed so much money, and why she’d gone to a loan shark to get it.

  Grabbing the paper, he smoothed out the wrinkles, and read the contents. Sam Jones had worked as a waitress in at least a dozen restaurants in West Palm Beach before she and her mother had moved to West Hollywood five years ago. She worked for two and a half years in five different dinner theaters in the Los Angeles area, doing everything from waitressing to set and wardrobe design. Acting hadn’t played too much of a part in her employment history in any of those theaters. She’d worked for a movie studio as a seamstress, and spent time behind the counter at Taco Bell, Burger King, and McDonald’s. She’d rented a small apartment in West Hollywood with her mother, and six months ago buried the woman, Felicity Jones—age forty. Friends and acquaintances said she was a nice kid who kept to herself.

  Jack scanned the rest of the page and learned nothing new, except that he owed Wes money.

  He ripped a piece of Remington Ranch stationery from his desk drawer and hastily scribbled a note to Wes. “Stop searching for info on Samantha Jones. Services no longer required.”

  The things he wanted to know from Sam he was learning little by little. She’d had a one-eared dog. She’d been lonely and poor, her mother worked at night, and for some reason she’d gone from job to job.

  Those were the kinds of things he wanted to know about Sam. The little things that had shaped her, and made him want her more than he’d wanted any woman.

  But he needed to know so much more. He wanted to know about her father and why her mother, who had given her so many words of wisdom, had died so young. He wanted to know why Sam was twenty-five, worked harder than any woman he’d ever known, yet lived in a Volkswagen bug.

  He also wanted to know why she’d borrowed money from a loan shark. He could just ask her, but she’d looked so damn uncomfortable telling him anything that he’d left it alone.

  He tossed the fax on top of his desk and got up from the chair. It was late, he was tired, and sitting in his room watching Sam sleep sounded a hell of a lot better than sitting in his office going crazy thinking about her.

  When he reached his bedroom, he knocked softly. Sam didn’t answer, so he stepped inside and locked the door behind him.

  Moonlight shone through the window, glancing off the empty bed. The bathroom door was open, and it was dark inside. He walked across the room and saw Sam curled up in the chair in front of the cold, empty fireplace, where he sat sometimes at night to read.

  She was dressed in one of his white shirts and a pair of his thick wool socks. With her legs drawn up beneath her he could see her thigh, her bare hip. God, she was beautiful.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled. “I waited up for you.”

  “Looks to me like you had trouble keeping awake.”

  She yawned, and her breasts rose and fell beneath his shirt. “The wine made me sleepy. The bubble bath didn’t help, either.”

  “Why didn’t you go to bed?”

  “I couldn’t, not until we figured out who was going to sleep where.”

  He laughed. “You can have the bed.”

  “Good. This chair isn’t all that comfortable.”

  “So you don’t mind if I’m miserable all night?” he asked, as she straightened her legs, and rose from the chair.

  “It was your decision to take the chair.” A faint smile touched her lips. “We never had much company when I was little, but my mama used to tell me that guests should always be treated special.” She climbed onto the bed and pulled the covers over her. “Mama would have liked the fact that you gave me your bed—and let me sleep here—all alone.”

  Jack grinned as she taunted him, tested him, and he knew she was enjoying every moment. “Is there anything else your mama would have liked about me?” he asked, taking her place in the chair, extending his legs in front of him, and crossing them at the ankles.

  “She would have liked your family,” she said sleepily, turning on her side and tucking her hands under her cheek.

  “What about me—personally.”

  “She would have liked the way you gave me your coat today, and the way you carried me into the house and worried that I don’t eat or sleep enough.”

  Jack watched her eyelids flutter, then close. “What about you, Sam? What do you like about me?”

  She yawned, burrowing her head into the pillow. “That’s a tough question, Jack. If you don’t mind, I’ll sleep on it and get back to you tomorrow or the next day.”

  He chuckled to himself as he watched her fall asleep. Sam Jones didn’t plan to cut him any slack at all. Hell, that was one of the things that endeared her to him. She didn’t pull any punches. She didn’t fall all over him, either.

  She’d gotten all the money she needed and as far as she was concerned, that’s all she wanted from him—except the comfort of his bed, which she firmly planned to sleep in alone. She’d carry out her end of their bargain and she’d hightail it back home.

  But he had other plans. He wanted to make her dream come true, wanted to make her believe she belonged someplace.

  And where he wanted her to belong was exactly where she was right now, with one difference. He wanted her to believe that he belonged next to her.

  sixteen

  Sam woke to the smell of woodsmoke and the crackling of a fire. At first she thought she was caught in the middle of a dream, one she’d had so many times as a child about waking up on Christmas morning in a house where a fireplace blazed and stockings hung from a mantel.

  This wasn’t a dream, though. Jack st
ood before the hearth, moving a log with a long-handled poker.

  “Can’t you sleep?” she asked, turning on her side and pulling the comforter around her shoulders.

  “No.” He gave the log a shove, and it settled in between two others on the fire. Sparks flew up the chimney, and a gentle flame skittered over the wood. Jack put the poker in its stand, went back to his chair, and sat. “That bed seems to suit you,” he said. “You weren’t having any trouble sleeping at all.”

  “It’s not quite as cozy as the passenger seat of a VW,” she said, smiling, “but I know it’s the best you have to offer.”

  “When was the last time you slept in a real bed, Sam?” he asked in that warm, concerned-sounding voice that constantly caught her off guard.

  “Six months ago, I guess. Why?”

  “Is that when your mother died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” she said, taking a quick peek at the clock beside the bed. It was just past 3:00 A.M., she wasn’t tired any longer, but she’d never talked about her personal life with anyone. “Wouldn’t you rather go to sleep?”

  “I’d rather talk. Arabella and I never talked about personal things until it was too late. Besides,” he said with a grin, “I can’t sleep, so why should you.”

  She’d never asked him about Arabella, never really wanted to know about the woman he’d loved. Now seemed the perfect opportunity to ask. “Why did the two of you call it quits?”

  “We didn’t have enough in common.” He folded his arms behind his head and stared at the fire. “Do you know anything about the stock market?”

  “Me?” She laughed. “I know that stocks go up one day, down the next, but what that means is beyond me.”

  “Do you know about mergers and acquisitions?”

  Couldn’t he ask her something simple, like whether or not she knew how to clean the grill at Denny’s, make a hot fudge sundae, or drive a stick shift? She didn’t want to look simple in his eyes, undereducated, but she couldn’t hide what she was. “You already know I’m not too savvy when it comes to business, Jack. I’m the one who went to a loan shark for money, remember?”