by Tami Hoag
“Can I ask why you’re wearing a necktie?”
Wade glanced down at his shirt front, at the strip of brown silk. Man, you really do need a vacation, he told himself. “Force of habit,” he said.
What an odd pair they made, Bronwynn thought, a runaway socialite and a burned-out corporate executive. He hadn’t said he was a corporate executive, but it took no imagination at all to picture him in a basic black suit with a proper paisley silk tie knotted beneath his stubborn chin. He probably was the heartthrob of the secretarial pool, she thought, knowing instinctively he would scowl at her if she said so. What an odd sort of relationship they’d fallen into. It was like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between antagonism and a quiet understanding.
She rather liked it. Too much, she told herself.
“What are you going to do?” Wade asked with a genuinely curious look, a little worry line jetting up between his dark blond eyebrows.
“I came here to think,” she said, gathering up the bags of junk food she’d dined on and setting them on the marble-topped end table next to the sofa. “I called my sister and told her not to expect me back until I get things sorted out. Right now I’m going to sleep, and I hope the mice don’t decide they want their couch back.”
They arranged their sleeping bags and turned down the lantern. Wade gave her a pillow and ordered Tucker out to the porch.
“I don’t mind if he stays in the house,” Bronwynn said, pulling off her shoes and crawling into her flannel-lined bed.
“I mind,” Wade said, toeing off his loafers. “He ate a whole plate of burritos for supper.”
“Oh. Well, good night.” The pillow had his scent on it, she thought, burrowing her face deeper against it—a pleasant, clean, male scent. He must have taken it right off his own bed. The idea unfurled a velvety ribbon of awareness inside her.
“Night,” Wade murmured, settling into the soft down bag.
Silence crept into the room with the stillness of night.
“Wade?” Bronwynn asked softly.
“Hmmm?”
“Thanks for coming back.”
THREE
BROWNYNN WAS AWAKE just before dawn. Soft gray light and a cool breeze spilled in through the broken front window. On the floor, not three feet away from the couch, a little mouse looked up at her, as startled as she was. It dropped the cookie crumb it had been breakfasting on and dashed away.
Wade was sprawled on his stomach, perpendicular to the foot of the sofa. He had left his sleeping bag unzipped, and the top flap was only half covering him. His right knee was drawn up to the side, the toe of his sock only a few inches from their pile of shoes. His white dress shirt had come untucked. At the highest point in the curve of his shirttail, a triangle of bare skin was visible above the waistband of his slacks. He looked cuddly with his hair disheveled and his long, thick eyelashes laying softly against his cheeks. He must have been a heart-stealing little boy, she thought.
Oh, no you don’t, Bronwynn. You can’t go falling for him. A: You’ve got to deal with what went wrong with Ross. B: You just met Wade Grayson. C: He’s a stuffed shirt—albeit a stuffed shirt who’s a secret sweetheart, but a stuffed shirt just the same.
The man was there for rest and relaxation, and he was wearing a necktie. That fact alone should have been enough to warn her away from him.
Her first priority had to be sorting out her life. For twenty-nine years her life had flowed in a strong current that simply had swept her along. The last two years, however, there had been rocks and rapids. Now she felt as though she’d been washed up on shore, battered and bruised. It was time to take a breather. She had to get her feet planted firmly on the ground and her head cleared before she could plunge back in.
Slowly she sat up and leaned back against the arm of the sofa, drawing her sleeping bag up around her, a look of wonder on her face. When was the last time she had needed to examine options before deciding on a course her life should take? Never, she realized.
Things simply had happened for her. Her modeling career had taken her straight from high school to high fashion. Just when she had been nearing a point where she would have had to decide to retire or fall from the ranks of the top cover girls to jobs for “older” models, her mother’s illness had made the decision for her. After her mother had passed away—her father having died in a car accident only days before—Bronwynn had followed her mother’s wishes and spent a year raising funds for the Cancer Society. Her wedding to Ross marked the end of that year.
What now?
A trip to the bathroom for starters. She had figured out there would be no running water without electricity, because the well had an electric pump. But there were four bathrooms in the house, and if they had been neglected the way the rest of the house had, they would still have water in them, therefore she could flush, she thought.
Wade cracked an eye open as Bronwynn tiptoed from the room. When she was gone, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, yawning and rubbing a hand over the dark stubble of his morning beard. He wondered how long it would be before Bronwynn packed up her camp stove and headed for more luxurious accommodations. A couple of hours maybe—maybe less once she got a look at the bathroom; there was stuff growing in there scientists had yet to name.
He felt a little twinge of disappointment at the prospect of her leaving. It wasn’t that he wanted to spend the day with her, he hastened to assure himself. He wanted her gone—ASAP. The sooner she was gone, the sooner he could put his plans in motion to buy the property and the sooner he could get down to the business of rest and relaxation. He certainly wasn’t getting much of either since he’d met Bronwynn. Except he . . . he . . . kind of wanted to spend the day with her.
Uh-uh, Grayson. She’s nothing but trouble. She beaned you with a six-pack, that should tell you something. So she gets your hormones dancing. There are plenty of women who can do that without giving you a worse ulcer than the one you’ve already got.
Off the top of his head he couldn’t name one, but there were plenty, he was sure. Somewhere. The truth was, he hadn’t been looking much lately. He’d been so consumed by his work, he hadn’t had time for a social life. Obviously that was why he was finding himself attracted to Bronwynn. It had been a long time, and she certainly was pretty. He breathed a sigh of relief. Lust he understood. Lust could be controlled.
Part of what he was feeling for Bronwynn no doubt was sympathy and compassion. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to make the kind of discovery she had made. But he could remember the pain and confusion that had filled her eyes right before she’d broken down, and the memory made him hurt all over.
What kind of jerk was this Ross character? The worst kind, Wade decided. The man hadn’t even tried to redeem himself by coming after Bronwynn; he’d just let her go. Her methods may have been a little unorthodox, but Wade had to agree, she’d done the right thing in leaving the clown.
A reluctant smile spread across his face. If Bronwynn had put on half the show at the wedding that she had when setting Ross’s luggage on fire, it would have been worth paying admission to have been there. No question, she had set Boston society on its ear. As he had seen for himself, life did not remain dull with Bronwynn around.
No sooner had he completed the thought when a scream split the air. Wade was on his feet and into the hall in a flash. A second scream directed him toward the back of the house. He ran down the long hall in his socks, glancing into each room as he went in search of Bronwynn. The bathroom door swung out just as he turned. He managed to dodge it, but stubbed his big toe in the process.
“Ouch! Dammit! You broke my toe!” He leaned back against the wall, holding his wounded foot, glaring at Bronwynn.
Bronwynn wasn’t paying any attention to him. She looked as though she had just met the devil face-to-face. “Wade! Wade! It’s a sn—sn—sn—”
“Snake?”
“Python!” She spat the word out, wiggling and shuddering.
“Python!” He rolled his eyes and headed back to the parlor, limping slightly, Bronwynn hot on his heels.
“It’s huge and it went right over my foot! Yuk!Yuk, yuk, yuk!”
Wade sat down on the sofa and pulled his sock off, his brows knitting together as he carefully examined his toe.
“This is no time to be playing with your feet!” Bronwynn said in a snappy tone, sitting next to him, curling her own feet under her as she cast a wary glance at the floor. She dragged a hand back through her hair and shuddered again. “Not with Monty Python on the loose in my bathroom.”
“Bronwynn,” Wade said tiredly, “this is Vermont. There are no pythons in Vermont.”
“Feel free to break the news to our legless friend in the bathroom, Mr. Science. You can explain it to him as you introduce him to the great outdoors.”
He gave her a sideways look as he rubbed his toe. “Maybe you should let him stay. He’ll help put a dent in the mouse population.”
“I prefer exterminators, they walk upright.” She stuck her left foot out and frowned at it. Like an idiot, she had left her shoes off. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Wade’s sleep by clomping around in her wing tips. Now a hideous creature had slithered over her skin. “And there’s going to be a troop of them in here first thing Monday morning.”
“You’re staying?” he asked cautiously.
“I don’t know how long I’m staying, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t have the place going to ruin like this,” she said, picking at a tuft of stuffing coming through the arm of the sofa.
Pulling his sock back on, Wade forced a weak smile. “I thought you’d take one look at this place in the bright light of day and run straight to the nearest realtor.”
“I’ve never given any thought to selling it,” she said with a shrug. “Until yesterday, I’d practically forgotten it existed.” A worried frown tugged at her eyebrows. “Did you really break your toe?”
He eased his shoe on. “No. It’s just sore.” He gave her a stern look. “You’re hard on a man, Bronwynn. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Maybe you’re just accident-prone,” she said.
“Right.” Wade rolled his eyes. “I accidentally walked under that six-pack last night, and it accidentally gave me a concussion.”
“I am sorry about that.” She climbed off the couch and went to the table to open her box of Twinkies. She tossed two to Wade and brought him a can of orange soda. “The least I can do is offer you breakfast.”
He made a silent apology to his doctor and dug in. For months he had been promising Dr. Jameson that he would start eating right, but it hadn’t happened. There was always an early meeting preventing more than a cup of coffee for breakfast, a crisis in his office that ran over lunch, take-out burgers for supper at his desk while he pored over the latest reports for the Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development.
He would start eating right just as soon as he got Bronwynn Prescott Pierson out of his hair. He had brought along the information on nutrition and proper diet a cute little dietician at the hospital had given him—one who had been so impressed by the title of congressman. He had met with her for over an hour, and not once had she tried to hit him over the head with anything. Funny he couldn’t think of her name as he sat watching Bronwynn devour another Twinkie.
“You said you were up here because of job stress,” she said, licking a fleck of cream filling from her finger. “What kind of job?”
“Congressman.” He thought she’d grimaced. “I’m a representative from Indiana.”
“Really?” It was worse than she had imagined. When it came to stuffed shirts, politicians headed the list. “Where in Indiana?”
“I’m from Lafayette.”
“I was in Indiana once,” she remarked, staring across the room at a sheet of wallpaper that was so full of ripples it looked three-dimensional. “I got lost. You really ought to do something about putting up more road signs. Or is that what they meant by the slogan Wander Indiana?”
Wade gritted his teeth as he lit his first cigarette of the day. “You’re from Boston, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Taking time off from modeling to get married?”
“I retired from modeling two years ago.” She wasn’t offended that he hadn’t missed seeing her picture in the magazines. It amazed her that he’d known what she had done for a living. It was her experience that politicians didn’t read anything but the Congressional Record and their own popularity polls.
“Must be rough,” he muttered, arching a brow. She couldn’t have been much over thirty, and she was retired. Of course, he should have given her some credit for having worked at all. He knew plenty of wealthy young women who had never lifted a finger for anything more strenuous than a manicure.
Bronwynn bit her tongue on the words pompous ass. What would he know about making an honest living? He was in a profession where he could vote himself a pay raise. He could go on a fact-finding mission to Tahiti and charge it to the taxpayers. Her temper was simmering just enough to lift the lid on restraint. “So all those Georgetown cocktail parties got to be too much for you?”
Wade scowled. “Yeah, I wore out my tux so I thought I’d come up here and hide out until my tailor has the new one ready.”
“Don’t forget to have him put an extra can of starch in the shirt,” she mumbled under her breath as she sipped at her orange soda.
“Actually, I don’t have a lot of time for cocktail parties.” One of his greatest pet peeves was the idea some people had that politicians hung out in Washington for the social life and nothing else. He wondered how many nights Bronwynn Prescott Pierson had stayed up until three-thirty agonizing over the wording of a bill or trying to find a solution to the family-farm crisis. “I take my job very seriously.”
He took himself seriously too, she added silently. “So did I,” she said. Let him see your life hasn’t been all champagne and roses either, she thought. He obviously believed she was some kind of social parasite. “Until my mother was diagnosed as having leukemia. Somehow after that making the cover of Vogue just didn’t seem so important.”
“I’m sorry,” Wade said automatically, but with sincerity. Sometimes it was just too easy for him to believe that people who had it easy never had to experience pain or loss of anything more than a few dollars on a bad day on Wall Street. He’d spent a lot of time with farmers who had lost their heritage, with homeless people who had nothing, but rich people couldn’t buy health or love.
“I retired to spend time with her and help her until she passed away.”
So, they’d reached the end of round one of sniping for the morning, she thought as she got up and wandered to her suitcase to dig through it for something to wear. If she had to cut the thing off with a knife, she wasn’t going to spend one more hour in her wedding dress.
She could feel Wade watching her. What was he thinking now, that she was a poor little rich girl? The sooner he left, the better, she told herself. How she could feel the least attraction for him was a mystery more puzzling than Stonehenge. In spite of their moments of odd friendship they didn’t get along at all. They were as mismatched as two people could be—a socialite who disliked politicians and a politician who disliked socialites.
Well, he was bound to leave soon. Then she could get on with what she’d come up there for, examining her life and her options. She didn’t need a politician around to help her. He’d probably want to set up a subcommittee or something. The way things worked in government, she’d probably be ready to collect social security before he came up with a solution.
Wade watched her toss evening gowns into one pile and expensive lingerie into another. It seemed like a good time for him to bow out. He would go back to the house and take his own advice to steer clear of her. It looked as though they were destined to step on each other’s toes. His doctor had sent him up here to rest, not to aggravate things by bickering endlessly with a woman he had little respect fo
r and who had no respect for him. It wasn’t any of his business what she was going to do with her life, so there was no reason for him to hang around.
He pulled his shoes on, then pushed himself off the sofa and went down the hall to find Bronwynn’s “python.” He would get it out of her house, then he could leave with a clear conscience.
“It was a garter snake,” he said, returning to the parlor.
Bronwynn looked up from her suitcase. “Are they poisonous?”
Wade shook his head, more in disbelief than to indicate the negative. “Poisonous snakes are virtually unknown in Vermont.”
“Did you have to touch it?” She made a face at the thought.
“No, it had made friends with a toilet plunger. I carried them out together. They parted company at the edge of the woods.”
“I hope he doesn’t decide to come back for a visit,” she said, surveying the outfit she’d settled on with a critical eye. White silk slacks and an emerald green silk pullover blouse was definitely overdressing, but she’d packed for Versailles not Vermont. “Thanks for getting rid of him, Wade.”
“Sure.” He rolled up his sleeping bag and gathered his gear, trying to ignore his disappointment at the thought of leaving. He forced himself to remember every outrageous thing she’d said or done since he’d met her and steeled himself against the memory of her weeping in his arms.
“You’re leaving,” she said, cursing herself for feeling disappointed. He was irascible, but she had enjoyed sparring with him. Maybe she was turning into some kind of sadomasochist. She grimaced inwardly.
“Yeah. I’ve got a lot of things to do,” he said, leaning back against the door jamb and ramming his hands in his pockets.
She refrained from pointing out to him that people who were on vacation for rest and relaxation didn’t generally have lots of things to do. Instead she accepted the lame excuse without comment and told herself she was glad he was going.
“So,” he said, not moving. “I’d better be going.”
“Right.” Bronwynn bit her lip and shot him a questioning glance. “Can I ask you one more small favor before you go?”