Mismatch

by Tami Hoag

  She played the press with a cunning that was almost ruthless, Wade thought as he listened to Bronwynn answer questions and turn accusations around. His Bronwynn, who was always so laid-back, could be a tigress when she was cornered.

  His Bronwynn. She wasn’t his anymore. She had been quick to believe the worst of him, and Wade had to wonder if she ever had been his. He hurt on two different levels. He couldn’t stand to have his integrity questioned. He was and always had been scrupulously honest—to have anyone think differently was the worst kind of affront. But he found the deepest hurt was that she questioned his love.

  He hadn’t told her soon enough that he was in love with her, but then, he’d never been in love before. It was new to him. So far, he wasn’t wild about the experience. First he had to go and fall for a woman who drove him bonkers, who was his opposite in every way. Now he hurt right down to his toenails, because Bronwynn had taken his declaration of love and spit it right back in his face.

  Dammit, how could she lose faith in him so quickly? How could she believe he was capable of such duplicity? Well, he’d known all along the workings of her mind were a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. The woman didn’t know what logic was. Steer clear of her, he’d told himself right from the start. Why hadn’t he taken his own advice?

  “How do you explain the backpacks you were wearing when you came out of the woods, Ms. Pierson?” asked one of the reporters who was standing at the foot of the porch.

  “There are nearly three hundred and fifty acres of forestland on this property,” Bronwynn explained coolly, looking down her nose at the woman. She was discovering anew the depth of her strength. She ached to find a quiet, private corner to curl up and suffer in, but she’d be damned if she’d let either the press or Wade see how badly she was hurting. “Congressman Grayson and I were going over it to determine if it would be suitable for cross-country ski trails.”

  “And are you going to purchase the property, Congressman?” questioned a young field reporter from one of the major television networks.

  “No,” Wade said quietly.

  Bronwynn jumped in before he could say more. “We were unable to come to terms. I’ve decided to keep Foxfire, renovate the house and grounds, and open it as a bed and breakfast inn.”

  “Then you won’t be going back to Indiana with the congressman?”

  He never invited me, she thought, pain slicing through her. Damn you, Wade Grayson, for making me fall in love with you. Damn me for being fool enough to do it. “No, I won’t be going to Indiana.” She shot a look at Wade, her eyes full of accusation. “I was never going to Indiana.”

  “What do you have to say, Congressman?”

  Wade’s level gaze never left Bronwynn’s face. The stubborn set of his jaw, the line of his mouth betrayed his inner pain, but neither was something the gossip hounds noticed. In general he appeared relaxed, bored even. His tone of voice was sardonic. “Our department of tourism will be disappointed.”

  “How does Ross Hilliard figure into this scenario, Ms. Pierson?”

  Bronwynn saw red at the mention of Ross’s name. He had sworn to get revenge on her for walking out on their wedding. He was getting revenge all right, the rotten creep. There hadn’t been a method of torture yet invented that was hideous enough for use on him, but she was thinking up several that came close.

  She managed an indolent shrug and raised a questioning brow at the reporter. “You tell me. As far as I’m concerned, Ross Hilliard is ancient history, water over the bridge.”

  “Under the bridge,” Wade muttered, rolling his eyes.

  Bronwynn wheeled on him, no longer able to hold back her temper. The wall she had hastily erected to keep in her emotions cracked then virtually exploded. “Dammit, will you stop correcting me! It can be water over the bridge if I want it to be!”

  “No, it can’t, because your bridge doesn’t connect on both sides,” Wade said, venting some of his own pent-up frustration. It wasn’t like him to lose his cool in front of the press, but then he hadn’t been himself since he’d met Bronwynn Prescott Pierson. Now he couldn’t think about the reporters on the lawn. All he could think about was that he had given Bronwynn the privilege of being the only woman he’d ever fallen in love with, and she was treating him as if he were something that had just crawled out from under a rock.

  “How dare you say such a thing to me you—you—you—man!” The word had become a curse to her once more. She turned to grab the sketches of the infamous ski lodge, intent on throwing them in Wade’s face, only to find Muffin had snatched them from Murphy and was making a snack of them. Camera lenses zoomed in on the sheep. Muffin bleated and bolted off the porch, dashing around the side of the house. Frustrated, Bronwynn grabbed Murphy’s portfolio and smacked Wade across the chest with it. “You can just take your ski lodge and stick it in your . . . home state. I wish I’d never laid eyes on you!”

  “Believe me, lady, it’s mutual,” Wade said between his teeth.

  Bronwynn stuck her tongue out at him, turned on her heel, and stormed into the house, not remembering or caring that there was a mob on her front lawn—a mob that had recorded every word she’d said for the evening news, the morning papers, and the weekly tabloids. Wade stomped down the porch steps and made a beeline for his car. Murphy hurried along behind him, toting Wade’s backpack. The reporters parted like the Red Sea lest they be mowed down, but they still shouted questions.

  “Congressman, will you build the lodge in Indiana?”

  “Did that bridge business have anything to do with the Safe Highways bill?”

  “Congressman Grayson, does this mean your relationship with Ms. Pierson is over?”

  Wade turned with one hand on the open door of his Lincoln and one braced on the roof. His eyes were trained on the door of the big old Victorian house. Pain dug its talons into him.

  “Absolutely,” he said tightly. He glanced at the reporters and flashed them a pale shadow of his famous smile. “Feel free to quote me on that.”

  “‘The Congressman and the Coquette: Land Deal or Liaison of Love?’” Zane read the tabloid headline aloud. She had arrived on the scene too late to protect her baby sister from the press, but not too late to offer a shoulder to cry on.

  “Coquette?” Bronwynn said, making a face. “Uck!” She leaned her elbows on the kitchen work island, which also served as breakfast bar, and stared down at her untouched Twinkie and the plate of scrambled eggs her mother-hen sister had plunked down in front of her earlier.

  Wizzer lifted another of the gossip rags Ross Hilliard had sent by special delivery. “‘Eccentric Heiress and Conservative Congressman—Moonlight in Vermont.’ The National Inquisitor calls it ‘a sizzling summer sex scandal.’”

  Bronwynn groaned. In the back of her mind she worried what the headlines were doing to Wade’s career, then she scolded herself for caring. He’d taken the worst kind of advantage of her. What did she care if his conservative constituents back in Indiana wanted to string him up by his thumbs. They were the least of what she wanted to string him up by.

  Zane reached across the table to pat her sister’s hand reassuringly. “It’s all over now, honey. With neither you nor that cad congressman making any statements to the press, the hoopla will die down in a matter of days. Just be thankful you found him out and got rid of him before it was too late. I knew he was trouble the minute I set eyes on him.”

  Wizzer laughed. He seemed enormously amused by the whole thing. “You caught them in a clinch, too, huh?”

  Zane lifted her slim nose haughtily. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Bronwynn said, propping her chin on her hand. She stared morosely at her new screen door and the two raccoons that sat on the other side staring in.

  “That’s all right, sweetheart,” Zane said with a sympathetic look. “It’s best to put it all behind you. Forget about the man. He was an unscrupulous cretin.”

  “Rabbit raisins!” Wizzer bellowed, spre
ading a liberal layer of grape jelly on an English muffin. “You blew it, Red.”

  Zane bristled. “How dare you speak that way to my sister!”

  Wizzer snorted. “I’m an old hermit, I can say what I want.” He took a huge bite of his muffin then carefully wiped the grape jelly out of his mustache. His blue eyes were like lasers when he turned them on Bronwynn. “Use your noodle, Red.”

  “Wizzer, he took advantage of me,” Bronwynn said defensively. It was really quite remarkable how fresh the pain felt every time she thought of what had happened.

  “How?”

  Bronwynn blushed. “He knew I was vulnerable . . .”

  “And?”

  And he took everything I had to offer him, then he hurt me and walked away. Unfortunately for her conscience, her memory wasn’t capable of being selective. Other images of her time with Wade surfaced as well. And he held me when I cried and listened when I needed to talk.

  Guilt nipped at her with sharp little teeth, not for the first time since the big blowout two days before. Her sense of righteous indignation bit right back when she thought of the sketches of the would-be ski lodge. “All he ever wanted was Foxfire.”

  First Ross had wanted her for her money, then Wade had wanted her for her land. It stung like the dickens to think neither had wanted her for herself.

  “Bullfrogs,” Wizzer said, pouring himself another cup of tea.

  Zane nibbled on her toast with a disapproving frown. “The man was obviously devious. He wasted no time making contact with Bronwynn, trying to take advantage of her emotional state—”

  “He stayed here that first night because he was worried about me,” Bronwynn said, bewildered by her need to defend the man who had betrayed her.

  “—and forced his company on her continually after that—”

  “Actually,” Bronwynn interjected, thinking of how often she had intruded on Wade’s privacy in an attempt to lure him away from his work, “it was more the other way around.”

  Zane’s black brows pulled together in annoyance as she turned her gaze on her sister. “Just whose side are you on?”

  Wizzer lifted a bushy brow and waited for her answer. Bronwynn squirmed on her stool, wrestling with the question inside her. She frowned at her hermit friend. “Why didn’t he ever tell me about the ski lodge?”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t important to him anymore.”

  “But the sketches—”

  “Don’t prove donkey doodle. Maybe he was interested in the land once. Are women the only ones who are allowed to change their minds?”

  “No, but Murphy—”

  “Obviously didn’t know the whole story. Did you give College Boy a chance to explain, Red?”

  Wade had told her he could explain, but she’d been too hurt to let him. He could have set things right at the press conference. Had he been too hurt to try again? Not only had she questioned his love, she had questioned his integrity as well. She remembered how furious she had been when Ross had wrongly accused her. How must Wade have felt when she had done the same thing?

  If he was indeed innocent. Bronwynn still felt safer clinging to her pain than believing in him.

  “Open your eyes, Red,” Wizzer said, gesturing to their surroundings with his English muffin. “Look around you. How many hours did the two of you spend working on this house? Why would he if he was planning to buy the property? Why would he spend his vacation time helping drive up the value of this place if he wanted to buy it and bulldoze the house? You think he’s a moron?”

  “No,” Bronwynn said softly, feeling properly chastened. She looked around the kitchen. The soot had been scrubbed away, the water cleaned up, the floor polished. She didn’t need to coax the memories of Wade helping her in the room to have them come to the surface. He had helped her sand and size the walls. He had helped her pull up the ugly carpet. Color rose in her cheeks as she remembered the day they had steamed the old wallpaper off the walls and had ended up on the floor beneath the stuff.

  He might have helped her just to get into her good graces, she thought. Maybe he had done it as some kind of perverse private joke. Neither possibility seemed very likely. As hurt as Bronwynn was, she still couldn’t believe he was a monster. In truth, beneath her hurt she couldn’t think he was any kind of a monster at all.

  Wade had the power to set her ablaze with a look or a touch. He had the tenderness to comfort her, the audacity to tease her. The only thing they had agreed on was their attraction to each other. She had known him only a few weeks, but he was no stranger. There had been a deeper sense of communication between them from the first. Now she felt ashamed for letting fear and distrust override her instincts.

  Taking her Twinkie with her, Bronwynn slid off her stool. “Excuse me for a few minutes, will you?” she said to Zane and Wizzer. “I need to think.”

  She sat down on the back steps, glancing at Bob and Ray, who sat a discreet distance away, their eyes on her Twinkie. With a resigned sigh, she broke her Twinkie and tossed each half to a raccoon.

  Wizzer was right, she had blown it. Ross’s betrayal had left her wary, ripe to believe the worst of Wade. The evidence against him had been circumstantial, but damning to someone who so recently had been deceived. She simply had reacted to the situation instead of holding her pain at bay long enough to look at the facts. She had done him a terrible disservice. If only Wade had explained about the land deal earlier. If only they had had more time together to build trust. If only—

  “If only’s aren’t going to solve this mess, are they, Muffin?” she asked, rubbing the head of the sheep that had scaled the steps in search of attention.

  What was she going to do? She loved Wade Grayson. Even when she’d believed he’d betrayed her, she had loved him. That was why it had hurt so very badly, far worse than Ross’s deceit had. Only true, deep love had the power to cause such pain. She loved Wade the way she had always dreamed of loving someone—with every fiber of her body and soul. The thought of losing him was unbearable.

  She loved Wade, but would he believe her after the way she’d treated him? She had accused him of some rotten things. Why should he take her back? In a moment of desperation he had told her he loved her, too, but had that fragile feeling been crushed by her lack of trust?

  There was only one sure way to find out, she thought resolutely, swallowing down a major case of nerves. She had to go to Wade and ask him.

  The old Bronwynn might have just waited to see if Wade would come back to her. The old Bronwynn would have drifted along with the tide and accepted whatever happened as her fate. But she wasn’t the old Bronwynn anymore. She had vowed to take control of her life. She had made a mistake and she would rectify it. She loved Wade Grayson, wanted Wade Grayson, and she was going to do whatever she had to to get him back.

  ELEVEN

  MURPHY MITCHELL TOOK one look at his boss and said defensively, “All you ever told me was that she was a pain in the—”

  Wade held up a hand to cut him off. It was the first thing his aide had said to him every morning since their return from Vermont. “Good morning” and “Hello” had disappeared from the man’s vocabulary entirely. Wade’s head was pounding hard enough from his own arguments, he didn’t need to hear Murphy’s again. Leaning his elbows on the desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and sighed heavily. “I know, Murphy, I know.”

  “Polls today are running thirty-four percent for you, twenty-nine percent against. Eight percent thought you were the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, and the other twenty-nine percent want to know where in hell is Rangoon and what does it have to do with Indiana.” Murphy poured himself a cup of coffee, checking his appearance in the reflection on the metal pot. “I’m losing my hair over this, Wade. I tried to warn you. Women like that are nothing but trouble.”

  “Women like what?” Wade bristled. He was still furious with Bronwynn for having doubted him, but it didn’t mean Murphy was free to insult her.

&nbs
p; Mitchell’s heavy shoulders lifted. He fussed with the knot in his tie. “Women like Bronwynn Prescott Pierson. Rich bit—”

  Wade cut him off with a flaming look. “Bronwynn isn’t a ‘woman like that.’ Bronwynn isn’t like anybody.” How true, he thought! No one on earth had the power to exasperate him the way she did.

  “Hey!” Murphy raised a hand in surrender. “I’m on your side, remember?”

  “Then let’s just drop it.” Wade massaged his temples, counting the seconds until he could take some more aspirin. Twelve thousand six hundred, twelve thousand five hundred ninety-nine . . .

  “I can understand if you’re still hung up on her, Wade.”

  “Murphy.” One word had never held so much menace.

  “Okay.” Mitchell wisely backed off the topic. He flipped open an appointment book on the desk and made a note. “I managed to put off your meeting with Lawrence Brockton until next week. Things will have cooled down a little by then.” Murphy rolled his eyes as he spoke of one of Wade’s biggest backers. “You know the man thinks politicians should be as celibate as priests. He’s going to rake your butt over the coals, friend—”

  “Dammit, Murphy,” Wade said. His temper had worn as thin as old flannel in the days since the press had descended on him and Bronwynn. “I don’t need another blasted lecture from you! I know what my obligations are. I know what mistakes I made. I sure as hell don’t need you browbeating me with it all. Just leave the damn paperwork and get out.”

  Murphy stepped back, his mouth thinning at the dressing-down from his boss. He dropped a sheaf of file folders on the desk and said tightly, “Fine.”

  When the door to his office closed, Wade dropped his head into his hands and raked his fingers back through his already-ravaged hair. He hurt too much himself to worry much about Murphy’s feelings. In fact, he was having a devil of a time not blaming Murphy for part of his pain. Murphy had been the one to bring up the land deal, but the man had only been doing his job, after all, trying to protect his boss’s reputation. And it wasn’t Murphy’s fault Wade never had told him about the situation between Bronwynn and himself.