Wife Wanted

by Christine Rimmer

  She was turning to pay some more attention to her glamorous new wardrobe when the phone rang again. She picked it up.

  And then immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “Natalie. I called just a minute ago. The line was busy.”

  “Joel. Give it up.”

  “Natalie, we have to talk.”

  “No, we don’t. Goodbye, Joel.”

  He was still begging her to talk to him as she gently replaced the receiver. She looked over at Bernie, who had stretched out on the floor a few feet away, his head on his paws.

  “Some people just don’t understand the word no.”

  Bernie lifted his head and yawned hugely.

  “My sentiments exactly.” She started for the side door and her waiting bags of beautiful clothes, but then decided that maybe she ought to check her messages first. After all, she had been gone all day.

  In the study where she kept the answering machine, she found there was only one message. From a soft-spoken woman with a British accent.

  “Hello. My name is Jessica Holmes.” On the tape, the woman paused, then sighed. “Oh, this is so difficult. Actually, I’m calling because I’m seeking relatives of a Benjamin Fortune. I thought perhaps… I don’t know how to put this—except to say that the matter is extremely urgent. I would greatly appreciate a call back if you are related to, or know of, a Benjamin Fortune, aged in his seventies, who served in France during the Second World War.” The voice left a London number and said goodbye.

  Torn about what to do next, Natalie hovered by the machine as it squeaked and beeped and reset itself. As one of the few people in her family who kept a listed number, Natalie often paid the price for being so accessible; she got a lot of crank calls.

  Total strangers had contacted her on more than one occasion with “urgent” messages. Inevitably they turned out to be reporters trying to get an inside scoop, or would-be wheeler-dealers who thought someone from the Fortune family might be interested in getting in on the ground floor of whatever money-making scheme they’d dreamed up.

  No one before had mentioned Grandpa Ben, though. That was a slightly different angle.

  Natalie replayed the woman’s message and actually went so far as to start to dial the number Jessica Holmes had left. But then she shook her head and put down the phone. She was sure of what would happen: The woman would turn out to be working some kind of angle. And Natalie had dealt with people like that one time too many.

  As the machine reset itself, she thought again of getting back to the job at hand: her new wardrobe. She’d spent three days in Chicago last week, buying everything in sight. And today she’d driven into the Cities to pick up a few other things. She was going to be très glamorous at the railing of that cruise ship, her hair blowing in the wind off the Strait of Gibraltar. Or maybe dancing on the tables in some picturesque Greek restaurant, drinking too much retsina and staying up until the crack of dawn.

  But then it occurred to her that Rick Dalton and his little boy would be arriving in two days’ time. And Rick wanted to put Toby here, in the study, so that he’d be nearby if Toby had bad dreams during the night.

  It was definitely time to move some furniture around. And she’d need some help; her back had been sore for two days after she dragged that old steamer trunk back up to the attic. Natalie picked up the phone and dialed the number of the big house across the lake.

  When the morning finally came that he and Toby returned to Lake Travis, Rick was more than ready to go. Though it was hotter and muggier than it had been that day two weeks before, the drive through the countryside was every bit as lovely as the first time. Rick simply kept the windows up and let the air-conditioning do its job.

  As they neared the farmhouse, Rick was conscious of a rising feeling in his chest, a lightness, a sense of pure anticipation at the prospect of seeing Natalie Fortune again.

  It was crazy, and he knew it, but he couldn’t get the enchanting brunette out of his mind. He knew he’d thought about her way too much in the past weeks, about her big brown eyes and her shining coffee-colored hair and the subtle perfume she wore that seemed both floral and musky at once. And about the way Toby had responded to her and her huge, friendly dog. After that visit, Toby had seemed more withdrawn than ever by comparison.

  Rick gave the boy a quick glance. Miracle of miracles, Toby met his gaze.

  “Excited?” Rick asked.

  He got no answer, but he was sure he saw Toby’s little mouth quirk. Rick chose to take that as another positive sign that this vacation was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to either of them.

  When they pulled into the turnaround in front of the walk, the captivating Natalie was there on the lawn, as Rick had secretly imagined she might be. She wore cutoffs and a snug T-shirt, and she was laughing, tossing a big stick for that lumbering, wonderful dog of hers to fetch.

  Rick’s heart did something impossible inside his chest. Dressed that way, with her hair caught back in a messy ponytail and sweat from the heat and the exercise making her skin gleam, she was Rick Dalton’s living, breathing fantasy of the girl next door. No one would guess that she was actually a daughter of one of America’s wealthiest and most famous families.

  She gave them a wave and tossed the stick overhand. It sailed, end over end, through the air. The dog loped off after it, and she jogged over to the car. Rick rolled down his window.

  She stopped a few inches from his door. “Right on time.” She was panting. Sweat had darkened her shirt beneath her arms and between the soft swells of her breasts. Rick would have sworn he could smell her: flowers and musk. He felt a hard, thoroughly inappropriate kick of arousal, one that tightened his slacks and cut off his air.

  He forced himself to breathe, grimly reminding himself that his son was sitting in the passenger seat beside him and he hardly knew this woman.

  Right then, the Saint Bernard came bounding up, the stick Natalie had thrown for him clutched in his jowls. Natalie’s quicksilver laugh rang out as the dog headed straight for Toby’s side of the car. Once he reached the passenger door, the huge animal sat, dropped the stick and gave a low, friendly woof.

  Toby flung open his car door, jumped down and wrapped his too-thin arms around the dog. Rick watched, his heart aching in his chest.

  He glanced at Natalie. She met his eyes and smiled—a soft, quivery-lipped kind of smile. She understood what a step Toby had just taken. And she was moved.

  A moment ago, Rick had wanted her desperately. Now he just plain adored her. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind now that the woman and her dog were absolute magic.

  When he looked back at his son, Toby was already lugging the big stick out to the lawn. Bernie trotted along behind him.

  “Come on,” Natalie said. “Let’s get your things inside.”

  Rick popped the trunk latch from inside the glove compartment. When he got out and went around to the back, Natalie was there ahead of him, pulling two bags of the groceries he’d bought into her capable arms. He hauled out a couple of suitcases and followed her up the walk, pausing to call a reminder to Toby that he wasn’t to wander off anywhere. Toby turned and looked at him, which Rick knew meant the boy had heard and understood.

  Inside, Rick found that Natalie had already made the study over into a bedroom. He set Toby’s suitcases down and admired the changes while Natalie went on out to the kitchen to drop off the grocery bags. Rick was still surveying the room where his son would sleep when she appeared in the doorway.

  “I had a couple of my father’s men come across the lake to help me out,” she explained. “We switched the furniture in here with the stuff from the room at the top of the stairs.”

  Rick was standing on the far side of the bed. He touched the bedspread, which was quilted and stenciled with airplanes. “I don’t remember seeing this upstairs.”

  Her cheeks flushed an adorable shade of pink. “All right. I confess. I bought the bedspread just for Toby.” She moved into the room, across th
e bed from him, and touched the wooden propeller of the airplane lamp that sat on the nightstand. “And I bought this lamp.” She pointed at the airplane mobile in the center of the room. “And that, too. I thought Toby would like them.”

  They looked at each other across the airplane quilt. Rick spoke around the sudden lump in his throat. “It was kind of you. To go to the trouble to fix up the room for him.”

  “No trouble. Really.”

  “You’ll let me reimburse you.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  He started to protest.

  She put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Not another word about it.” She turned for the door. “Now, come on. We haven’t finished unloading the car yet.” And she was gone, leaving him no choice but to follow. Which he did, after a moment spent grinning like a idiot at the airplane mobile rotating slowly in the slight breeze created by the air-conditioning vents.

  Within half an hour, Rick had all of his and Toby’s things put away and his car parked next to Natalie’s in the big garage on the south side of the house.

  Natalie was showing him where to put his groceries when he told her he wanted to take the Lady Kate out onto the lake for a picnic lunch.

  “That okay?” he asked.

  “Of course. Sounds like fun.”

  Rick picked up the last bag, which was full of packaged goods, and headed for the laundry room and the small pantry closet there.

  Natalie watched him go, reminding herself, as she’d been doing ever since the man and the boy arrived, that Rick was the tenant and she was the landlady. And that was all.

  The problem was, Rick seemed even more attractive now than he had two weeks ago. His eyes seemed bluer, his shoulders broader. And every time he smiled at her, her stomach did the strangest things.

  Her thoughts on Rick and not much else, Natalie went to the refrigerator and took out a package of deli-sliced ham, some spicy mustard and a big jar of kosher-style dills.

  “What are you doing?” Rick asked. He was standing in the short hall from the laundry room.

  She froze and looked down at the food in her hands.

  And it came to her: She’d been about to make him some sandwiches. She was the landlady and he was the tenant and nothing in the rental agreement said a thing about meals. And yet he’d mentioned the word lunch and she’d automatically started making it.

  She was just a hopeless case—that was all there was to it. Get her near an available man, and the first thing she did was start fixing his food for him. It had been that way with Joel. She’d loaned him money when he was short—some of which he never had paid back. She’d graded his papers and cleaned his little cottage in town. She’d bought his groceries when she bought her own—and then been waiting for him every night when he showed up at her door with his dirty laundry under his arm and “What’s for dinner?” on his lips.

  Rick clearly had no clue of the direction of her thoughts. He was grinning. “Lunch is already made. I stopped at a deli before I left Minneapolis.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah. They even put it in a nice big picnic basket. It’s got everything—including paper plates and plastic forks. I left the basket on the front porch. Maybe you didn’t see it.”

  She sincerely prayed that her face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Um. No, I guess I didn’t.” Very carefully, she set the sliced ham back in the meat drawer and the mustard and pickles on a shelf and closed the refrigerator door. “Listen. I’ve got a few things to do. I should probably just get busy on them.”

  He folded his arms and leaned against the little section of counter that projected off the wall to the laundry room. “Damn. I was hoping you’d come with us.”

  Her heart lifted. It was ridiculous. She had to get a grip on herself here. “You were?”

  “Yeah.” He was wearing a dark blue knit shirt and khakis. The shirt clung to the hard contours of his shoulders. And with his arms folded like that, the muscles of his biceps were starkly defined. And his dark hair was so shiny, it even curled a little. It was the kind of hair any woman would want to run her fingers through. And he had the nicest mouth. It was firm, but there was fullness to it. Natalie thought that it would probably be a wonderful mouth for kissing—a mouth that could command and beguile at the same time.

  “Natalie.”

  “Um. Yes?”

  “Come with us.”

  “Oh, I really shouldn’t. You know how it is, when you have so many things to—”

  “Please?”

  And her own mouth just opened and she heard herself say, “Okay.”

  He stopped leaning on the counter. “Great.” He looked so cool and collected.

  And she realized that she felt sticky and grungy in her old cutoffs and sweaty T-shirt. “Listen. Could you give me a few minutes? To clean up a little.”

  “Take all the time you need.” He started walking toward her.

  She backed away, all nerves and confusion. She shouldn’t be going with him. She shouldn’t have said yes. He was renting her house for a couple of months, she reminded herself for what had to be the hundredth time. And that was all that was supposed to be going on here. “A few minutes. Really. I won’t be long.”

  He stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “I’ll go out and hunt down Toby and the dog.”

  “Yes. Do that. Good idea.” She backed around the central island that contained the stove, and then just kept walking backward toward the main hall. Rick watched her go.

  As soon as she lost sight of him, she realized how silly she must look, walking backward through the hall. So she turned around, squared her shoulders and marched, head high, up the stairs.

  She came down twenty minutes later, freshly showered and dressed in white shorts, a red silk camp shirt and a pair of sandals. The shower and the change of clothes had helped a lot. She felt much more in control of herself—until Rick smiled at her and told her she looked great and she felt like a tongue-tied teenager all over again.

  They all trooped down to the dock out back and into the boathouse where Rick put the lunch basket in the big galley of the cabin, and then got a quick lesson in how to operate the boat from Natalie. Since no one planned to water-ski, they left the smaller boat behind.

  For their first time out, Natalie backed the Lady Kate from the slip inside the boathouse, so that Rick could see how it was done. Then, once they were launched and pointed in the right direction, she turned the wheel over to Rick.

  Several miles out, they turned off the big engine and let the boat drift. Rick brought out the lunch. More than once as they devoured the lemon roast chicken and pasta salad, Rick teased Toby that Bernie would get fat if he didn’t stop slipping him treats.

  “And look how big he is already,” Natalie said. “If he gets fat, he’ll fall through the floor of the farmhouse.”

  “He’ll sink the boat,” Rick warned.

  Natalie couldn’t resist adding, “The dock will collapse when he wanders out onto it.”

  Toby just looked at them—and gave Bernie the last hunk of his dinner roll.

  When they’d eaten their fill, the child and the dog stretched out on the deck, while Natalie and Rick made themselves comfortable on the padded benches that lined the bow. They leaned on the railing and gazed off at the shoreline, picking out the houses that could be seen here and there between the trees.

  “There. Look. That’s my family’s estate.” Natalie pointed at a huge green expanse of lawn on a faraway bank. The lawn swept up to a graceful stone balustrade and a wide terrace. Behind the terrace loomed an imposing Greek Revival-style house, its many windows glittering like jewels in the afternoon sun.

  “Impressive,” Rick said.

  A wave of sadness washed over Natalie. Once, the huge house had been like a second home to her. But now, with her father living there alone save for the small army of staff the place required, it just wasn’t the same. She’d spoken to her father two days before, when she’d asked him to send help to switch the furnit
ure around for Toby. He’d sounded awful—distracted and distant. In spite of her determination to steer clear of family turmoil, she hadn’t been able to stop herself asking him if he was all right.

  He’d laughed; it had been a grim, depressing sound. And he’d told her not to believe everything she read in the papers, that he was getting by.

  Now, she found herself telling Rick, “When I was a little girl, it seemed as if we used to spend more time in that house over there than at our own house in Minneapolis. We’d come out on weekends, even in the deepest heart of winter, when the grounds were covered in a blanket of white and we had to spend most of the time indoors. And in the summer, we’d sometimes come and stay for weeks at a time. Grandma Kate and Grandpa Ben lived there together, right up until he died, about ten years ago. When I was little, my aunt Rebecca— She’s Grandma Kate and Grandpa Ben’s youngest. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

  “Rebecca Fortune…the mystery writer?”

  “That’s the one. Anyway, Aunt Rebecca was still a child, too. So she lived at the estate. And my uncle Nathaniel used to bring his family for visits, the same as my dad and mom brought us—all the time. So the place always seemed like it was full of kids. Overflowing with activity. Laughter and happy shouts just bounced off the walls.”

  Rick was watching her, smiling a little. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  “Three sisters, one brother.”

  “A big family.”

  “You actually sound jealous.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “I was an only.”

  “You wanted siblings?”

  “You bet I did.”

  She couldn’t resist confessing, “There have been times I would have gladly given away one or two of mine.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Is that a fair question?”

  “Natalie. Come on.”

  “Oh, all right. The twins. Allie and Rocky.”

  “Allie’s the model.”

  “Yep. And Rocky looks just like her. They’re identical. Two of the most gorgeous women in the world—even though Rocky never went in for the glamour route. She’s a pilot, like Grandma Kate.”