Wife Wanted

by Christine Rimmer

  The great Newsweek controversy occurred on a Monday, a week and two days after Rick and Toby moved in. Rick was sitting on the porch when Natalie returned from her walk out to the mailbox. She handed him his mail. He asked for his Newsweek. Naturally, she told him the magazine was hers.

  “Read the mailing label,” he said, and not in a pleasant tone.

  Natalie explained, very reasonably, that she didn’t need to read the mailing label; she’d been getting Newsweek for years.

  “There you go,” he said with great disdain. “Jumping to conclusions again.”

  So she read the label. The magazine was his. “I’m sorry.” She handed it over. “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. But you were wrong, weren’t you?” And he got up from his seat and went inside, while she stood there, staring after him, feeling angry and frustrated and telling herself to just let it be.

  And then, the next morning, when she was right in the middle of her step-aerobics routine, he struck again.

  Natalie had just moved into the really tricky part of the routine, a series of leaps and hops from one side of the step to the other, when the pounding started on the door to her sitting room. Startled, she stumbled and turned her ankle on the step.

  There was more pounding as she checked her ankle for damage and then gingerly put her weight on it. Once she’d determined that she could still walk, she armed the sweat off her forehead, hit the pause button on the VCR and marched, limping a little, to the door.

  Rick was standing in the hall, a fuming look on his face and a rolled-up towel tucked under his arm. Natalie recognized the towel. Last night, she’d washed her lacy undies—the scandalously revealing ones that she’d bought for the express purpose of feeling sexy and daring. And she’d left them to dry on that towel in the laundry room.

  He shoved the towel at her. “You left these in the laundry room.” It was an accusation, pure and simple.

  She tried for a totally nonconfrontational response. “Oh. Sorry.”

  He still looked positively thunderous. “Don’t do it again. There’s Toby to consider, in case you forgot. A five-year-old boy does not need to know about underwear like that for years yet.”

  She knew she should just say she’d be more careful and quietly shut the door. But he was being too ridiculous. And she was getting irritated. She asked, very quietly, “Did Toby see my underwear?”

  He looked her up and down, and she hated him for it. She knew her hair was wet and stringy, her tank-style leotard was sweat-spotted and her ancient Nike shorts were unraveling around the leg hems. He seemed to be breathing too hard.

  To be honest, she was breathing too hard, too. But she had an excuse. After all, he’d interrupted her workout.

  “Did Toby see my underwear?” she asked again, when he did nothing but continue to stare at her.

  He shook himself and answered curtly, “Well. No. Not that I know of.”

  “Good. So there’s no problem. And anyway, even if he did happen to see some lacy things lying on the folding table, he’d have no idea what he was looking at.”

  Rick’s response to that began with a grunt, an infuriatingly masculine—and superior—sound. “Some five-year-old boys have more ideas than you’d think.”

  “Not Toby. He’s a sweetheart.”

  “Whether he’s a sweetheart or not has nothing to do with this.”

  She knew he was right. And she would have gone even further: Toby had nothing to do with this. They were not really talking about five-year-old boys at all.

  And they were both breathing too hard.

  It was time to end this dangerous conversation, even at the expense of eating a little crow.

  “As I said, I apologize.” She felt far superior to him, because she sounded so reasonable. “I didn’t think.”

  He made another smug grunting sound; apparently he didn’t realize that she was getting the better of him by her calmness, her willingness to admit that she’d been wrong.

  She gritted her teeth and spoke even more graciously. “I won’t leave my lingerie down there again.”

  “Good,” he growled, then turned without another word and marched off down the stairs.

  Half an hour later, when Natalie went down for breakfast, Toby came and took her hand.

  “What is it?”

  Toby gave a tug. Natalie went where he pulled her, over to the coffee table in the great room, where a building-block garage had been carefully assembled.

  “Did you do this by yourself?”

  Toby nodded proudly.

  Natalie got down on her knees and looked inside at three Matchbox cars lined up in a neat row. “Why, you have the cars in there already.” She sat back on her heels. “It’s really a fine garage. Great job.”

  Toby beamed.

  Natalie didn’t realize Rick was standing behind her until she pushed herself to her feet and turned. And there he was, arms folded across his broad chest, staring broodingly at her.

  She blinked. “Rick? What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  When he just went on staring at her, she shrugged and started to turn.

  He reached out and clasped her arm.

  She froze, her heart kicking into high gear, her whole body suddenly tingling. “What?”

  He looked down at his own hand on her arm, and seemed bewildered as to how it had gotten there. He jerked it away. “Look. Toby and I are going out on the lake today. Do you mind if we take the dog?”

  “Of course not.” She wondered why he’d asked. Bernie and Toby were more or less inseparable. The dog slept every night in the child’s room now, and followed the boy wherever he went. They’d been out on the boat five or six times since that first day they arrived, and Bernie had been with them every time. Rick had stopped asking if they could take the dog days ago.

  “Just wanted to be sure it was all right with you.” His voice was utterly flat.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Well, good.” And he turned and walked away, leaving Natalie as he left her too often lately: staring after him in indignant confusion.

  They were gone within the hour. Natalie should have been relieved to see Rick go, but she wasn’t, not really. It was an overcast day, gray to suit her mood. The house seemed too quiet—until about ten-thirty, when Erica arrived.

  Up in her rooms, Natalie heard the car screech to a stop. She ran down the stairs and pulled open the door just as her mother raised her hand to knock.

  Erica’s face was paler than usual. “Natalie. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Natalie led her mother to the kitchen, poured her some lemonade and listened to the latest distressing news about her father.

  “Nathaniel called me, just an hour or so ago.”

  “What for?”

  “He wants me to speak to Jake—and I intend to do just that.”

  “Why?”

  “For the sake of the family.”

  As always, Natalie strove to provide the voice of reason. “I don’t understand. I thought you said that things were really bad between you and Dad.”

  “They are. But Jake is my husband.”

  “But if you can’t talk without fighting, how in the world are you going to get through to him ‘for the sake of the family’? It makes no sense.”

  “I just have to see for myself that he’s okay…or that he’s not.”

  “What are you going to do if he’s not?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll deal with that problem if and when it arises.”

  “Look, consider the source here, all right? You know how Uncle Nate is. He never has just one reason for anything he does. He could be sending you over there because he knows what will happen.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You and Dad will fight.”

  Erica waved a hand. “No, truly. Nate seemed honestly upset about Jake.”

  “He’s always been upset about Dad.”

  “No, this
is beyond that rivalry of theirs, more than Nathaniel being green with envy because his big brother got the head job in the family business. This was fear.”

  “Of what?”

  “That your father really is cracking up.”

  “Mother, are you sure?”

  “Nathaniel says that Jake shows up at the office maybe two times a week now. He’s unreachable the rest of the time. Nate just called him this morning, as a matter of fact. To insist that Jake come in. Jake said he’d be there by noon, but Nate doesn’t know whether to believe him or not. Nate also says that the last time Jake showed up at the office, on Friday…” Erica closed her eyes and took in a long breath.

  Natalie reached for her mother’s hand. “Mother?”

  Erica forced herself to finish, “The last time Jake showed up at the office, he was drunk.”

  It took Natalie a moment to digest that piece of information. It seemed so completely out of character for her father. Jacob Fortune was a powerful, self-possessed man. He would never allow himself to appear at his office under the influence of anything but his own indomitable will.

  Erica drew up her shoulders. “Nat, I’m going over there.” Then she turned pleading eyes on her daughter.

  Natalie sighed; she knew what was coming.

  “And if I go alone, you’ve already predicted what will happen—an argument. Probably a very bad one.”

  “You want me to go with you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Oh, Nat. If you would. Please.”

  “Mother…”

  “Please?”

  Natalie reminded herself, as she was always doing, that she was not going to be drawn into the family drama. Never again. No way.

  Still, if even Uncle Nate was worried about her father, things must be bad.

  “Nat, will you?”

  Natalie swallowed. “Now?”

  Erica leaned forward and brushed a strand of hair back from Natalie’s cheek, the way she used to do all the time, years ago, when Natalie was little. “Yes, let’s go now. I just…I feel so agitated. I don’t think I’ll be able to settle down at all until I’ve seen him. Until I talk to him and find out exactly how bad this really is.”

  Natalie was weakening. How could she help it? The need in her mother’s eyes was so strong. “Shouldn’t we call first? What if he’s not there?”

  “If we call, he might say he won’t see us. And if he’s not there… Well, it’s only a wasted trip around the lake. Let’s just go now. Please.”

  “Mother—”

  “Please.”

  Natalie knew she was beaten. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Nine

  Though they could have used the ski boat that was waiting in the boathouse, Erica wanted to drive. So they took the long way around the lake, through the forest of elm and maple and oak that was so green and lush that time of year.

  By the time they reached the estate’s front entrance, a steady, soft rain had begun to fall. They rang the bell. A female voice Natalie didn’t recognize answered. “Yes, who is it, please?”

  “Erica and Natalie to see Jake,” her mother said.

  “Please wait.”

  A few minutes later, the voice told them to drive right in. The big iron gates swung wide and then closed behind them automatically.

  It wasn’t long before they were turning into the sweeping drive before the colonnaded front of the main house. Everything looked just as Natalie remembered it. Beneath the misty veil of the rain, the lawns were the same deep swaths of emerald and the ornamental shrubs were trimmed and neat. Whatever was going on with Natalie’s father, at least the groundskeepers were still doing their job.

  Jake’s head driver appeared just as Erica pulled the Mercedes to a stop. He opened her door for her, holding a large black umbrella so that she wouldn’t get wet.

  “How are you, Edgar?” Erica emerged from the car and into the shelter of Edgar’s umbrella.

  “Just fine, ma’am.”

  Erica handed him the keys. “Don’t take it far.” She and Edgar began walking toward the wide front steps, the driver scrupulously careful not to let Erica get wet. “I have no idea how long we’ll be, but probably not too long.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Natalie was already out of the car and dashing across the polished flagstones toward the marble steps when Edgar turned to assist her as he had her mother. He looked at her reproachfully as she flew past him between the tall columns, into the shelter of the portico.

  She grinned at him. “Good to see you, Edgar.”

  “Yes, miss.” He held the umbrella over his own head now. His tone, as always, was terribly proper and reserved. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  Natalie hurried to join her mother, who had already turned and approached the massive front door. Almost before Erica finished ringing the bell, the door was pulled back by a gray-haired woman in a plain blue skirt and blouse.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fortune.” It was the same voice they’d heard over the intercom.

  “Hello. I don’t believe I know you.”

  “I’m Mrs. Laughlin, the new housekeeper.”

  “I see. I’d like to speak with my husband, please.”

  “Certainly. Mr. Fortune asked me to bring you to the library.” The woman closed the big door. “This way.” She started to turn.

  “I know the way to the library,” Erica said.

  The housekeeper stopped where she was. “You mean you…don’t wish to be announced?”

  “No. I can announce myself. Very effectively.”

  Natalie cast a quick glance at her mother. Erica’s elegant shoulders were high and proud, her chin was tilted defiantly, her famous cheekbones were flushed a deep rose. The nervous, needy woman who’d arrived at Natalie’s house half an hour before might never have existed. Erica was anticipating the battle with the primary adversary—and grand passion—of her life: her husband.

  “You may return to your duties,” Erica told Mrs. Laughlin.

  The housekeeper had clearly been given firm orders to escort them to the library. “But…” Her protest faded when she met Erica’s determined gaze. “As you wish.” With a slight nod of acquiescence, she retreated, her crepe-soled shoes whispering on the polished floor.

  When she was gone, Erica turned to Natalie. “How long has she been here?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  Erica raised a hand to her neck. The emerald that Jake had given her years ago sent out glints of green fire in the dim entry hall. “If the staff is quitting—”

  “Mother. Let’s not jump to conclusions, all right? The fact that Dad’s hired a new housekeeper doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “You’re right, of course. Sorry.”

  “Let’s just go see Dad, all right?”

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  Side by side, mother and daughter walked down the huge central hall to the library’s massive double doors. When they reached them, Erica drew in a deep breath, took one polished brass handle in each slender fist and pulled the doors wide.

  Inside the library, Jacob Fortune sat in the high-backed swivel chair behind the sprawling leather-topped desk that had dominated the room for as long as Natalie could remember. He was wearing one of his beautiful Armani suits. His proud shoulders were drawn back, his lean hands before him on the desk. He looked up sharply when the doors opened, and his dark eyes narrowed at the sight of his wife.

  “Hello.…darling.” Erica paused just long enough before the endearment that it almost sounded like a curse.

  “Erica.” There were a thousand shades of meaning in the single word. In it, Natalie could hear love and hate, despair—and tenderness.

  For an extended moment, husband and wife stared at each other. Watching them, Natalie felt totally irrelevant. Oh, what in the world had possessed her to let her mother talk her into this? She shouldn’t be here. Erica Fortune was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles with Jake; she’d been do
ing it for years, after all.

  And, oddly, at the same time she longed to be elsewhere, Natalie couldn’t help thinking of Rick. Because the way her father looked at her mother seemed, at that moment, to be exactly the way Rick looked at her lately.

  Which was ridiculous. There was no grand, ruined passion between herself and Rick Dalton. She was Natalie, after all, the ordinary one, not the type to inspire any overwhelming emotions. Men liked her. They got comfortable with her. They depended on her. And, too often, they took advantage of her. But they certainly didn’t look at her as if she’d single-handedly crushed all their dreams.

  “Don’t stand on ceremony. Just walk right in.” Jake laid on the irony when at last he spoke again.

  “Thank you. I will.” Erica swept into the room, Natalie in her wake.

  “Hello, Nat.” Her father’s voice was warm. Though there had been conflicts between her father and more than one of her other siblings, Jake and Natalie had always gotten along. Natalie, after all, was neither brilliant nor beautiful. Nor was she a son. She served no purpose whatsoever in Jake’s dreams of empire. Thus, he could love her unconditionally and leave her to make her own choices in life.

  She gave him an uncomfortable smile. “Dad.”

  Jake’s look became scathing once more as he turned it on his wife. “Whatever you’re up to, you shouldn’t have dragged poor Nat into it.”

  Erica’s perfect chin remained lifted high. “I needed support.”

  Jake made a low scoffing noise, then stood and came around the desk. He gestured at a brocade sofa nearby. “Have a seat.” Natalie started for the sofa, but her mother’s voice stopped her.

  “Thank you, no. We can’t stay but a moment.” Erica frowned as she looked Jake up and down. “You look…well enough.”

  And he did, Natalie thought. Not well, exactly: there were dark circles beneath his eyes and the grooves around his mouth were much deeper than Natalie remembered. No, he didn’t look well. But he did look well enough.

  Jake raised a silvered brow. “So. You’re here to check up on me.”