I DO, BUT HERE'S THE CATCH

by Pamela Burford

  Look at all she was getting out of the bargain, he'd reasoned. What right had she to complain about the lack of physical intimacy or children?

  And she hadn't complained. Not one peep. She'd simply absorbed the shock of the news on their wedding night and settled in to her wifely role as dictated by her new husband.

  He almost wished she'd railed and sobbed and thrown things. Then maybe he could convince himself that this really was a fair, quid pro quo arrangement, that if she wasn't content with it, she'd simply leave. Divorce him. But something told him that Charli would never leave, no matter how unhappy she was. She'd swallow her misery and tough it out.

  Through an effort of will, Grant forced himself to abandon this fruitless train of thought, forced himself to focus on his goal. The snarled road map of his back was an enduring physical reminder of why, for the longest time, he'd sworn off marriage—and why, once it had become clear he couldn't achieve his goals without it, he'd orchestrated a practical, platonic union over which he could exercise complete authority.

  Growing up in his turbulent childhood home, Grant had been forced to ride the out-of-control emotional roller coaster of his parents' marriage: the intoxicating, too brief highs, which inevitably bottomed out into despair, rage and violence. As a terrified child, he'd been at the mercy of their ungovernable mood swings.

  Was that why he'd felt such an instant bond with Charli's family? he wondered. Why he so enjoyed spending time with them? Because they were so different from the people who'd raised him?

  Perhaps he was reading too much into it. Anyone would have warmed to her family the way he had. A person would have to be made of stone not to respond to the convivial mayhem of the Rossi family get-togethers.

  Mutely Charli stared at him, as if trying to read his thoughts. Finally she said, quietly, "If you change your mind—if you ever want to talk about it—I'm here."

  Grant had to get out of this room, away from Charli—for all the good it would do him. The feel of her was indelibly imprinted on his hands. He tasted her still, and would continue to, he knew, as he lay in bed later, begging sleep to come.

  The bleak irony was that his own wife was the last woman he should consider sharing that bed with. There was too much at stake. He'd come so far. The partnership hovered just out of reach, like a carrot on a string. It would be his, he'd vowed, before his fortieth birthday in November. He'd do whatever he had to to make it happen.

  True, this expedient marriage was threatening to jump the rails, but he'd get it back on track. Of course, it would help if he could avoid intimate little encounters like this one. He never should have entered Charli's room.

  Tomorrow he'd call Jayne Benning. She was sexy, uninhibited, and best of all, discreet. Knowing that within twenty-four hours he and Jayne would be a tangle of heaving bodies and sweaty limbs didn't stop him from asking, "Have there been any other men? Since you and I have been together?"

  She held his gaze. "Not yet."

  Grant felt an exquisite rush of relief, and that was a problem. He shouldn't care so much. After all, be couldn't argue with her reasoning. If he was free to seek sexual gratification outside their marriage, so was she.

  That particular technicality hadn't occurred to him before he'd discovered that the woman he'd married was sensual, alluring and deliciously responsive. Sooner or later, she was bound to look elsewhere for what she wasn't getting at home.

  Grant bade his wife a curt good-night and retreated to the solitary safety of his own room, where he punched his pillow into submission and lay staring into the dark.

  There was a reason he'd married a mousy, sexless woman, damn it! So why couldn't she have stayed that way?

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  «^»

  Charli took a deep breath. "I have something to tell you."

  Amanda, Sunny and Raven exchanged glances. Raven's husband, Hunter, asked, "Should I leave?"

  Charli gave him a shaky smile. She shook her head. Though she hadn't known Hunter long, they'd established an instant rapport. He was almost like a brother, as encouraging and supportive as her three best friends, all of them now enjoying Sunday brunch at Hunter's comedy club, called Stitches. "No," she said, "you should hear this, too. Maybe … maybe it would help, to get a man's perspective." She took a deep breath. "Where should I start?"

  Raven set down her drink, a mixture of apricot nectar and champagne. "Is it about Grant?"

  Charli nodded.

  "I sensed there was … a little trouble," Raven said. "I was hoping it was my imagination."

  "It wasn't your imagination." Charli had agonized over the decision to confide in her lifelong pals. For the past two weeks since her wedding, she'd been too ashamed to do so. Perhaps subconsciously she'd hoped Grant would change his mind, that their marriage would miraculously turn into a normal, loving one. She now knew that if that was going to happen, she'd have to make it happen.

  She stared at her plate, laden with a Greek omelette she'd barely touched. The lively sounds of Stitches buzzed around her: chatter and laughter, bluegrass music drifting from speakers, the clatter of flatware on the club's signature mismatched china. Framed antique story-magazine covers adorned the dark paneled walls. Irresistible aromas filled the air, although Charli's appetite had deserted her.

  "I don't know how to say this. It'll sound so … bizarre."

  A reassuring hand settled on her right shoulder—Sunny's hand.

  "Our marriage is more of a … a business arrangement." Charli glanced up to gauge her friends' reactions as she continued, "We don't sleep together. There will be no children. It's the way Grant wants it. He married me to help him become partner in that stuffy law firm he works for. They don't like bachelors."

  Raven and Sunny stared slack-jawed at her. Amanda muttered a string of curses under her breath. Hunter's features tightened into an angry mask. He asked, "And you agreed to this?"

  "No, but … he thought I had. I mean, when he proposed, he said something about it being a, um, companionable marriage. Stuff like that. But he didn't really spell it all out. He felt bad about that, later. He thought I understood."

  "Don't you dare make excuses for him!" Amanda hissed, her face blooming with angry color.

  "I'm not. He just… It's complicated."

  "He's using you," Sunny said miserably. She looked around the table. "And we arranged it. We introduced them."

  "This isn't your fault," Hunter told them. He shoved his fingers through his dark, wavy hair, which was long enough to curl over the collar of his faded, black denim shirt. "No one could have predicted that this guy would be so completely screwed up."

  Tears dogged Charli's throat. "I love him."

  Amanda groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

  Sunny said, "Charli, you're just confused—"

  "I do," she insisted. "I've loved him since—since that first night, when he took me to dinner and that club, and—and kissed me."

  It took no mental gymnastics to decipher the look that passed among her friends. Poor, naive Charli. One kiss and she's head over heels.

  Amanda said, "I'll tell my divorce lawyer to expect your call."

  "No!"

  "Honey, what's the use in prolonging it?" Sunny asked. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a 'companionable' marriage?"

  "No, but…"

  "Please don't tell me you're going to change him," Amanda pleaded. "Men don't change. Period."

  "Oh, I don't know," Hunter said, sliding Raven a teasing look. "You'd be surprised how a guy's priorities can get turned around, given the right incentive."

  Amanda rolled her eyes. "God save me from starry-eyed newlyweds."

  "You gonna eat that?" Sunny asked Hunter, reaching across the table to spear his last piece of French toast.

  "So let me get this straight." Amanda lowered her voice. "You and Grant haven't had sex? Not even once?"

  Charli shook her head.

  "So you're still a virgin."
/>
  Charli shot a quick glance at Hunter, now contemplating a slice of bacon with undue interest. Could her face get any hotter?

  "Good!" Sunny pronounced. "The bastard doesn't deserve you. Save it for somebody who does."

  How could Charli make them understand? It wasn't so cut-and-dried.

  The waitress arrived and took the dessert order. Everyone ordered something except Charli. "You can take this away," she said, indicating her uneaten omelette.

  Hunter addressed the waitress. "Lisa, bring the lady a double espresso." When Charli started to object, he said, "A little caffeine will do you good, Carlotta. And you told me yourself the espresso we serve here is delicioso."

  Raven, sitting on her left, placed her hand over Charli's. "Okay, so Grant married you to advance his career. He's introducing you to his colleagues, I take it?"

  "Only a couple of them so far. We're giving our first formal dinner party for some of the partners in a couple of weeks. I'm a little nervous, but at least Grant gave me enough notice. He learned the hard way not to spring things on me at the last minute. I just hope I don't do anything to embarrass him."

  Hunter frowned. "What makes you think you'd embarrass him?"

  "Well, he's real particular about appearances—anything that can influence the big shots in his firm. He's been coaching me on etiquette, what to talk about, how to dress. Even what newspapers and magazines to read."

  Amanda grumbled, "Move over, Henry Higgins."

  Charli would have laughed, if the comparison between her and My Fair Lady's Eliza Doolittle weren't so wretchedly accurate. As if she weren't self-conscious enough before, her husband's incessant "constructive criticism" had further eroded her confidence.

  Charli brightened. "I did manage to keep my old car, though."

  "Your Camry?" Sunny frowned. "What do you mean, you got to keep it?"

  "Well, he wanted to buy me a new Infiniti. He was real insistent about it. But I like my car and I refused to let him replace it."

  "Guess you showed him," Amanda said dryly.

  Raven glared at Amanda. To Charli she said, "Good for you. You're learning to hold your own with him."

  "But he won't sleep with her!" Amanda cried, ignoring everyone else's attempt to shush her. "Am I the only one who sees this as a major stumbling block? At least my two exes liked sex."

  "Grant likes sex," Charli said. "Just not—" She clamped her mouth shut, but the others heard the part unsaid. She saw it in their faces. Just not with me.

  "All right," Hunter snarled. A muscle jumped in his jaw. "I'm going to take this guy apart."

  "He's sleeping with other women?" Amanda asked. "Well, of course he is. Stupid question."

  "Let me guess," Sunny said. "He expects you to sit by the hearth darning his socks while he jumps in the sack with all these other women. What's good for the gander is off-limits to the goose."

  "That might've been what he expected," Charli said, with a little smile, "before last Wednesday." She told them about her conversation with Grant, and how she'd implied that she was enjoying the same freedoms as he.

  "That's my girl!" Amanda crowed.

  Hunter just chuckled, a rich, deep, wickedly appreciative sound that had Charli biting back a snicker of her own. It had been rewarding, watching Grant's face as he began to realize there would be no double standard in their so-called marriage. His reaction had told her he wasn't as indifferent to her as he tried to pretend.

  Raven was smiling, too. "What did he do?"

  "He…" Charli took a deep breath and blurted, "He shoved me against the door and kissed me till I practically fainted."

  Four sets of eyebrows shot up.

  "And other stuff," she said.

  "You let him do other stuff?" Amanda snapped.

  "What other stuff?" Sunny asked.

  "You know…" Charli wasn't going to say it!

  "Is this where I should leave?" Hunter asked, but no one was paying any attention to him.

  Amanda leaned toward Charli. "But not all the way?"

  "No, I told you, I'm still…" She hesitated.

  "A virgin. You can say it." Amanda leaned back so Lisa, the waitress, could set down her mug of jasmine tea. "Lord knows you've been one long enough."

  Didn't Charli know it!

  As the others started in on their desserts, Charli sipped her espresso and said, "I don't want you to think it's all bad. Grant is, well, he can be really sweet. I had that awful cold, you know, a couple of days after the wedding, and he took such good care of me, tucking me into bed and bringing me hot drinks and aspirin and running out to the all-night pharmacy to get me cough syrup. He didn't even care about all the germs I was exposing him to. He just wanted me to feel better."

  "That's great," Sunny said, "but, honey, it doesn't nearly make up for…" She raised her hands and let them fall.

  "And just yesterday he took me sailing," Charli said. "He's got this big sloop, and when he found out I'd never been sailing—can you believe it, me growing up on an island?—he took me out on the Sound. I was afraid I'd get seasick, but he put these elastic bands on my wrist with these little buttons that press on an acupuncture point, and anyway, I felt fine and we stayed out for hours and he made me take the tiller. Me! I almost steered us into a buoy, but he was just as calm and patient as anything."

  Grant had given his boat the lawyerly-sounding name Tempus Fugit, meaning "time flies." Its cabin consisted of two separate areas: a main room with two bench beds and basic kitchen facilities, and a two-person sleeping space in the bow. Had he ever stayed out all night in the boat? she'd asked him. His answer had been a simple yes, and she'd dropped the subject, not wanting to know how many women had shared that cozy sleeping nook with him, even if he'd been willing to tell her.

  "The weird thing is," she said, "he likes kids."

  Sunny looked up from her banana split. "I thought you said—"

  "He doesn't want children—at least he doesn't want to do what gets you children—"

  "With you," Amanda interjected, and Raven smacked her shoulder.

  "But he's so good with kids," Charli continued. "You should've seen him with my one-year-old grandniece."

  Sunny asked, "The Good Twin or the Evil Twin?"

  "The Evil Twin."

  The table erupted in a chorus of "Oohs." Everyone there had met little Valkyrie.

  "So it's not that he hates kids or anything," Charli said. "The thing is, I think he feels guilty. About denying me children. And a, you know, normal marriage. He keeps buying me these expensive presents. I wish he'd stop."

  Amanda opened her mouth to comment, but Raven silenced her with a look.

  "I know he's given you some bitchin' jewelry," Sunny said. "The ring set for starters, and there's that emerald bracelet, too."

  "And a sapphire necklace," Charli said.

  "You should be wearing your stones," Amanda said. "They're not doing any good sitting at home."

  Charli's smile was lopsided. "The new stuff looks out of place in my old jewelry box, the one Grandma and Grandpa Rossi gave me when I was ten. That's something else I won't let him replace."

  Raven looked at Amanda, who mimed the act of zipping her mouth.

  "And he's bought me all those new clothes, of course," Charli related, "but they're, I don't know, more of a costume really, to make me look presentable when we hobnob with the senior partners. When I was sick with that cold he bought me this beautiful antique trinket box with gorgeous marquetry work on the outside. Just to cheer me up. And he tried to give me a sable coat. In May! But you know I'm ethically opposed to wearing fur."

  Amanda let out a strangled whimper, but swallowed back whatever choice words she had on the subject.

  Raven said, "And you think these presents are his attempt to make up for all that you're giving up in your marriage?"

  Charli nodded. "Yeah, I do, but I don't think he realizes that's what he's doing. It's not like a conscious thing."

  "He should make it up to you," A
manda said. "And you should take everything he offers—right before you divorce his sorry ass."

  "I don't want a divorce. At least … not yet. I want to get to know him first. There's so much about him that's still a mystery."

  "Like how does he have the nerve to treat you this way," Sunny offered. "There's a mystery for you."

  "He's had something really bad happen in his past, I'm sure of it, but he won't talk about it. I guess he doesn't trust me enough."

  "It's not you," Hunter said. "Sounds like this guy doesn't trust anyone but himself."

  "He has these…" Charli's voice shook. She lowered her voice. "He has these scars. Raised welts. On his back. It looks like … it's this crosshatch pattern, but irregular. I can't imagine what would have done that."

  The others lapsed into sober silence.

  "All he'd tell me is it's an old injury," Charli said. "What kind of injury would do that?"

  "A car accident maybe," Sunny said.

  Raven said, "With damage only to his back? It doesn't seem likely."

  Hunter frowned. "Maybe he was in some kind of industrial accident."

  "I don't know anything about his past except that he grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania," Charli said. "I have no idea what other kinds of jobs he might've had or anything like that."

  Raven asked, "How have things been the last few days since the two of you got a little physical?"

  "He's been avoiding me."

  "Taking you sailing doesn't sound like avoidance," Sunny said.

  "He's keeping his distance is what I mean. Even in the boat, the two of us were never inside the cabin at the same time. He made sure of that."

  Hunter chuckled again. "Sounds like you've got the guy on the run."

  "I don't want him on the run," Charli whined. "I want him…"

  Raven said what Charli couldn't. "You want him in your bed. There's nothing wrong with that. He's your husband, Charli." She gave her a gentle smile. "That's where he belongs. And that's what you deserve."