5 Minutes to Marriage

by Carla Cassidy

  Jack nodded. “Then that leaves Kent, Sam, Max or Betty. And of course you,” he added.

  A stain of color crept into her cheeks, letting him know he’d made her angry. “If you really think I’m capable of such duplicity then you need to fire me right now,” she exclaimed.

  “I’m not saying you’re responsible,” he protested. “Marisa, think about it, I’d be a fool not to consider everyone right now.” He sighed in frustration. “It appears that somebody I trust, somebody who is in my confidence, is betraying me.”

  Some of the color in her cheeks faded. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but it isn’t me, Jack. I don’t know Harold Rothchild. I’ve never spoken to the man in my life. I certainly want what’s in the best interest of Mick and David, and I’ve told you that as far as I’m concerned that’s having them here with you.”

  “I trust you, Marisa,” he said, and as the words left his mouth he recognized the truth in them. Even though he’d only known her a little over a week, he trusted her without a doubt. “What I have to figure out is who is betraying me.” He rubbed a hand wearily across his forehead. “Somebody is playing with my life, Marisa.”

  It had been a long time since Jack’s anger had been directed outward instead of inward. But now a wave of anger bigger than any he’d ever known filled him. “More important, somebody is playing with my boys’ lives, and when I find out who it is, I’ll make them damned sorry they ever did.”

  Chapter 6

  “I’ve invited Kent to have breakfast with us,” Jack said first thing the next morning.

  Marisa took a sip of her coffee and eyed him over the rim of her cup. He didn’t look particularly friendly. A knot of tension throbbed in his jaw, and his eyes were stormy.

  “You don’t look too happy at the prospect of a guest for breakfast,” she observed.

  “I lay awake half the night thinking about who might be selling me out to Harold,” he replied. He shoved his empty coffee cup aside and stared out the dining-room window, where despite the early hour the Nevada sun already looked blazing hot.

  “What about Betty?” she asked softly, hoping the woman working in the kitchen wouldn’t hear her. “Or maybe Sam or Max?”

  Jack turned back to look at her. “I just can’t imagine it. She’s more interested in soap operas and talk shows than in what’s going on in this house. As far as Sam and Max are concerned, I’m not even sure they knew what happened during my dinner with Heidi. That leaves Kent.”

  It was obvious by the expression on his face that the idea that his friend was capable of such a thing hurt him. “Maybe there’s another answer. Maybe Harold has somebody watching the house,” she offered.

  She thought of those moments outside the day before when she’d thought somebody was watching her. Maybe it hadn’t been Max’s gaze that she’d felt on her. Maybe somebody else had been hiding nearby, watching her, watching them all.

  “Maybe,” Jack replied, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I’ll know by the time breakfast is over if Kent is really my friend or not.” He shoved back from the table and stood. “He’s always been a terrible liar. I’m going to head outside for a little while. I’ll be back soon.”

  She watched him go and once again had the impression of a lonely man who wasn’t sure who he could trust in his life.

  What must it be like to have two precious children and be afraid all the time that some powerful entity might steal them away?

  She frowned thoughtfully and stared at his coffee mug. Did she dare? She knew what she was contemplating would far exceed the boundaries of her position, but nevertheless she grabbed Jack’s coffee cup and carried it to her bedroom. A few moments later she then returned to the kitchen and asked Betty for a small paper bag.

  Betty gave her the bag, then looked pointedly at the door, as if inviting Marisa to leave. But instead Marisa sat at the table and eyed the woman who had been working for Jack since the boys had come to stay.

  “You enjoy cooking?” she asked, even though she knew it was a foolish question.

  “It’s what I know how to do,” Betty replied.

  “What made you decide to come and work for Jack?”

  Betty stirred a simmering skillet full of hash browns then wiped her hands on a towel and turned back to face Marisa. “I was a good friend of Jack’s mother. A fine woman, she was. When Jack put out the word that he needed some household help there weren’t many people lining up for the jobs.” She shrugged. “You know his reputation wasn’t the best. But I knew Jack’s mother would want those boys to eat well so I decided to come to work for him.”

  “And you like working for him?”

  “The pay is good, between meals I get to watch my television shows and I’m in my own house by six every night. What’s not to like?”

  “Your husband doesn’t mind you being here every day?” Marisa asked.

  “My Joe left me a year ago. Dropped dead of a heart attack at a slot machine in downtown Vegas. We never had any kids.” She sighed. “I knew early on that I wasn’t one of those maternal types. This job fills in the long hours of the days.”

  “I know Jack appreciates you being here for him,” Marisa said as she got up from the table. She wasn’t sure what she’d hoped to accomplish, but like Jack she couldn’t imagine this woman being the pipeline of information to Harold Rothchild.

  She was about to walk out of the kitchen when Betty called her name. She turned back to face the old woman.

  “That woman Jack married broke his heart. I hope you don’t plan on doing the same thing.”

  Marisa stared at the older woman in stunned surprise. “I’m an employee, just like you,” she replied.

  Betty snorted and turned back to the stove.

  Marisa hurried to her bedroom, where she tucked Jack’s coffee cup into the paper bag. Then noise from the boys’ bedroom let her know they were awake, and she hurried into their room to help them dress for the day.

  It was eight o’clock when Kent arrived and they all sat down for breakfast. The conversation remained pleasant throughout the meal although Marisa could feel tension wafting off Jack. Kent seemed oblivious to the stress that tightened Jack’s jaw and filled the air as the meal came to an end.

  “I’ll just take the boys to their room to play,” Marisa said as she rose from the table.

  “Why don’t you let them play on their own? I’d like you to stay here,” Jack replied.

  She really didn’t want to be a part of the confrontation she knew was coming, but she also didn’t want to leave if Jack needed her to stay. She got the boys out of their booster seats, told them to play in their room and then returned to her chair at the table.

  “What’s up?” Kent asked as if for the first time feeling the tension that rode thick in the air. He looked at Marisa and then back at Jack.

  “We’ve been good friends for a long time, haven’t we, Kent?” Jack asked, his voice deceptively calm.

  “Except for your Los Angeles years, sure. Best friends,” Kent replied. Once again he shot a quick glance at Marisa, then looked back at Jack and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been a great friend to me, but I know you and your band have been struggling. I imagine money is tight,” Jack said.

  “Money’s always tight,” Kent said with a small humorless laugh. “There’s nothing new about that, but I always get by.”

  “I’ve got a problem, Kent.”

  “What’s that?” Kent gazed at him warily.

  “Somebody close to me is feeding Harold Rothchild information about the boys.” It was obvious from Jack’s tone that this was difficult for him.

  Kent sat back in his chair and stared at Jack. “Are you accusing me? You really think I’d do something like that?” His face reddened. “You invite me here for breakfast and then accuse me of something like that? You’re crazy, man.”

  “Kent, I’m not accusing,” Jack protested. “I’m just asking.”

&n
bsp; Kent scooted his chair back from the table and stood. “I can’t believe you’d think I’d do something like that to you. You’re my closest friend.”

  He slammed his hands down on the table and glared at Jack. “If I were you, I’d look a little closer to home.” He looked pointedly at Marisa and then at Jack. “Remember Ramona? The showgirl who is friends with Marisa? Guess where she works, Jack. At Rothchild’s casino. You want to find a snake? Beat the grass in your house, Jack.”

  Marisa gasped as Kent stalked out of the kitchen and a moment later the front door slammed shut with a resounding bang.

  Jack reached for his glass of water and Marisa couldn’t help but notice that his hand trembled slightly. “That went well,” he said dryly.

  “Did you believe him?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know what to believe.” His eyes looked hollow and dark. “I just know I feel like I’m on borrowed time with the boys, and I don’t know how to change that.”

  Mick came into the dining room. “David went out the window,” he said. “He wanted to play the drums again.”

  Both Marisa and Jack jumped up from the table and raced for the front door.

  “I thought these locks on the windows were child-proof,” Marisa exclaimed.

  “Apparently they aren’t David-proof,” Jack replied.

  As Jack raced after the little boy who was halfway to the barn, Marisa stood on the porch and wondered how on earth this father was going to fight somebody as wealthy and as powerful as Harold Rothchild?

  Jack wandered the living room long after the boys had gone to bed. Marisa had helped him get them settled in for the night then she had left to go visit her aunt Rita.

  He was surprised by how much he felt her absence. It was as if she’d taken some of the energy in the house with her when she’d gone.

  The fight with Kent that morning had left a bad taste in his mouth that had lingered throughout the day. Jack had never been the kind of man who looked for a confrontation. Nothing had ever been important enough for him to fight over until now. For Mick and David he’d confront a five-headed monster.

  He went into the kitchen and decided to put on a short pot of coffee. He was reluctant to call it a night and go to bed until Marisa got home safe and sound.

  It was funny how quickly she’d become a part of his routine. He liked the time they spent visiting after the boys had gone to bed. He enjoyed the sound of her laughter, a rich, joyous sound that never failed to make him smile.

  It wasn’t just the loving way she interacted with the boys that drew him to her. She seemed to know instinctively when to give him space and when to ride him hard.

  He liked the way her hair sparkled in the light, how the scent of her flooded his senses.

  In fact, there was nothing about Marisa Perez he didn’t like.

  After the coffee had brewed he poured himself a cup and sat at the table. He rarely sat in the kitchen, had come to consider the room strictly Betty’s territory.

  It was a nice, warm room, and he had many memories of meals at this very table with his mother and father. Many nights Kent had joined them, and Jack’s mom had often joked that she must have been asleep when they’d adopted Kent.

  He wrapped his hands around the warm coffee mug as he thought of Kent. Betrayal was always tough to take but particularly so when it came at the hands of a friend.

  He was still sitting at the table at ten-thirty when he heard the front door open and the beep of the security alarm preparing to ring. The beeping lasted only a minute then stopped as the code was entered.

  He smelled her before she entered the room, that slightly spicy floral that heated his blood and left him wanting more.

  “Hi,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be up.”

  “I decided to make some coffee. There’s a cup still there if you want it.”

  “No, thanks. Too late for caffeine for me.” She sat in the chair across from him at the table. “Everything all right here?”

  “Fine. I managed to fix the lock on the window where David escaped earlier today. If I ever have trouble opening a bottle of aspirin I’m giving the bottle to him.”

  Marisa laughed. “We’re just going to have to be vigilant about keeping the alarm on not just at night but also during the day. That way we’ll know when he manages to get a window or a door open.”

  “I don’t understand why he keeps trying to get out. Today he wasn’t even running toward the barn. He was just running.”

  “Curiosity,” she replied. “David is curious about everything. When he starts school he’s probably going to challenge his teachers.”

  “I have a feeling he’s going to challenge me. How was your visit with your aunt? Everything okay?”

  She frowned. “I still get the feeling that something’s wrong, that she’s worried about something, but I can’t get her to confide in me. She says it’s work related and that’s all she would tell me. You know she’s been working on Candace’s murder case.”

  “Maybe they finally have some leads to the killer,” he replied. “It would be nice to see justice done and the guilty behind bars. I think maybe that would give Harold some peace.”

  “Have you heard any more from him? Any more phone calls tonight?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, but I realize it’s just a matter of time.” A new wave of discouragement filled him. His heart felt as if it weighed about a hundred pounds.

  “What made you decide to get clean and sober, Jack?” she asked.

  He leaned back in his chair, surprised by the question. But he realized that in all the conversations they’d shared, they’d never talk about this particular part of his past.

  “Candace and I were big on the party scene.” He frowned thoughtfully. “It was what brought us together, and for a long time I think it was what kept us together. The only time we stopped was when she was pregnant with the boys.”

  He stared out the nearby window, thinking about those days with Candace. Many of the early days of their marriage were nothing more than a blur. They had rarely been sober back then.

  He turned his attention back to Marisa. “It was after David was born that I tried to change our life. I wanted to be the kind of father the boys needed, and that meant no more booze and no more drugs.” He sighed. “Ultimately I think that’s why Candace divorced me—because I wasn’t fun anymore.”

  “She wasn’t ready to give up the fun?”

  A dry laugh escaped him. “I’m not sure what it would have taken for Candace to turn her life around, but it wasn’t me or the boys. So we divorced and she took the boys. She made it almost impossible for me to have any interaction with them. She took them to Europe for several months, then back to Los Angeles. She was rarely in one place for long.”

  “And so you came back here,” Marisa said.

  He nodded. “And proceeded to drink myself into a stupor. For the next six months I pretty much stayed drunk. It was Kent who came over to see that I ate, to check on me to make sure I was still alive.” He grimaced. “It’s a time in my life I’m not proud of.”

  “So what turned things around for you?”

  “One morning I stumbled into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked dead. I looked like all I was waiting for was somebody to shovel dirt over me.” He met her gaze. “On the sink in my master bath is a small photo of my parents. I stared at that picture and was ashamed of who I was, of what I’d become.”

  He thought of that single defining moment. It was as if his parents had reached out to him from their graves.

  “I also realized at that moment that it was possible at some point in the future the boys might need me. I knew eventually I’d have to justify the choices I’d made in my life to them.” His voice deepened. “I didn’t know if it would be five years or fifteen, but some day those boys would want to get to know me and that got me clean and sober. Being a drunk wasn’t something I wanted to have to explain.”

  Marisa stared
at him for a long moment, then turned her head to look out the window, her brow furrowed in thought.

  Jack tried not to notice the soft curve of her jaw line, how the yellow tank top she wore clung to her full breasts. His head filled with the memory of how those breasts had felt in his hands, how her mouth had clung to his as if they were both drowning.

  He felt himself getting aroused at the very thought and chastised himself for letting his mind wander.

  Needing to do something—anything—to cleanse the erotic images from his head, he got up from the table, poured himself another cup of coffee and stood with his hips against the counter. At least with this distance between them he couldn’t smell her fragrance.

  She finally looked at him, her gaze as somber as he’d ever seen it. “You told me that you have two strikes against you if push comes to shove over custody of the boys. The first was your past.”

  He nodded slowly, unsure where she was going with this.

  “But you’ve never been arrested, and most of the stories of your legendary partying were in the tabloids, right?”

  “Right,” he agreed.

  “Which are not always true.”

  “Definitely,” he said dryly. “The tabloid reports were always full of untruths and exaggerations.”

  “You’ve kept a very low profile since moving back here to the ranch, and nobody can make a case that you aren’t an upstanding citizen now.”

  He moved back to the table and sat, still unable to guess where she was going with all this. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “So really the only issue is the fact that you’re a single man trying to raise two children alone. We could fix that. We could make sure that Harold couldn’t use that fact against you.”

  “And how would we do that?” he asked.

  She held his gaze intently. “You could marry me.”

  Chapter 7

  Marisa saw shock take possession of his features. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, and she took advantage of his momentary speechlessness.