The Billionaire's Bride

by Jackie Braun

  “So, how long are you down here for?” she asked conversationally as she settled into her chair. She could hear her mother’s voice in her ear: A polite host or guest doesn’t monopolize the conversation but tries to get others to talk about themselves.

  Clearly J.T.’s mother had made no admonition. At his glare, Marnie sighed.

  “Oh, that’s right. You can ask questions, but apparently I’m not allowed to. I’ve got to tell you, J.T., given your attitude, it’s really no wonder that you vacation alone.”

  If he was insulted, it didn’t show. “And what’s your reason?”

  “I’m not vacationing.”

  She thought about the morning spent lazing on the beach and the afternoon spent poking through the little shops in town, dickering with the locals over trinkets and a rather sparse assortment of souvenirs to take home.

  “Not really,” she amended.

  “Ah.”

  She watched his eyes narrow. Why was the man so prickly, so suspicious all the time? And was the reason something she should be nervous about? The conversation with Marisa came to mind again. So, some of the locals thought the man might be a drug dealer? But Marnie’s instincts had rarely failed her, and she trusted them this time. A drug dealer he was not. He had some money. That much was clear from that glimpse into his house—vacation home no less—and his quality clothing.

  For instance, the designer logo on the shirt he wore told her that despite the garment’s casual cut, it commanded a pretty formidable price for what amounted to a long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “So, why are you here?” he asked for what seemed like the millionth time.

  “I’ve already told you that I’m just on the Baja Peninsula to get away.”

  “Because life in bustling Chance Harbor is so hectic?”

  It didn’t dawn on her to wonder how he knew that Chance Harbor was anything but bustling. Instead she thought about her day-in, day-out struggle to eke out a living while single-handedly raising her son. She wanted more than that for Noah. Once upon a time, she’d wanted more than that for herself.

  “Something like that.”

  Because her tone had turned melancholy, she forced a smile to her lips and, determined to keep the conversation light, she asked, “Do you have glasses or are we going to drink that wine straight from the bottle?”

  J.T. studied her in the meager light. He didn’t want to get glasses. Getting glasses would mean they would be sharing more time together and he had already decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. There was something about this woman that told him to turn tail and run. Something about her was dangerous. Even if for just a moment she had seemed almost sad, vulnerable.

  She crossed her shapely legs, letting one sandal dangle flirtatiously from her left foot. Despite the gathering dark, he knew that her toenails were painted a fiery red.

  Vulnerable? No way. She was dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

  When he failed to answer her question, she merely shrugged and, without another word, tore open the bag of chips. She scooped out a handful for herself before turning the bag toward him. He resisted the offer, determined to resist the woman as well.

  After munching on the chips, she brushed her hands together and brought her feet up onto the chair seat. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and said, “If you drive up the west side of the Keewenau—it’s a peninsula in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—you can see sunsets like the ones here on Superior.”

  “It’s a lake,” he said dryly. “You can’t compare a sunset on the ocean to a sunset on a lake.”

  “It’s not a lake. It’s a Great Lake,” she countered.

  “So?”

  She shook her head in apparent dismay.

  “You know, a few years back some U.S. senator got the bright idea to reclassify Lake Champlain in Vermont as a Great Lake. Something to do with funding of some sort for some project or another.”

  She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “Well, folks in Michigan got a little hot about it, I can tell you. We take our Great Lakes pretty seriously.”

  “So I gather,” he replied, intrigued despite himself. This wasn’t the usual conversation he found himself engaged in while sitting in the semidark with a beautiful woman.

  “Newspaper columnists and assorted pundits—”

  “Pundits?”

  “The folks who get paid to offer supposedly informed opinions.”

  “I know what the word means.”

  “Ah.” Curved eyebrows inched up. “Just shocked that I do, hmm?”

  He grimaced. “I’ve insulted you. Sorry.”

  But she merely shrugged. “I’m not blond, but I get a lot of that. Anyway, back to my story. The pundits came up with all sorts of ways to define what constitutes a Great Lake. They made up top ten lists, that sort of thing. Do you want to hear my favorite?”

  “By all means.”

  “You know it’s a Great Lake if you can’t see across it.” She turned and smiled brightly in the dim light. “Just like the ocean.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he got up and walked to the door with the wine bottle in his hand.

  “Calling it a night?” she asked.

  He stood for a moment with his back to her. He could go inside, he knew, close the door and pass an evening in quiet comfort before his state-of-the-art entertainment center or his equally high-tech computer, tinkering with some experimental software he was still perfecting.

  But when he turned the knob and stepped inside, the words he left her with were: “Just going to open the wine.”

  When he came back out, he lit a few of the tiki torches that surrounded the patio. The move was practical given how dark it had become, but it also made the patio, not to mention their conversation, seem more intimate.

  A couple of hours later they had polished off more than half the bottle of wine. The merlot wasn’t up to J.T.’s usual standards. This bottle probably cost less than ten dollars, whereas the hand-blown goblets they drank it out of ran more than five times that, each. And yet he couldn’t remember when he had enjoyed a vintage more.

  He didn’t want to admit it was Marnie’s company that had bumped the dry red up several notches in his estimation. He let her dominate the conversation—not that he really had any choice in the matter. But he didn’t find himself bored by her ongoing commentary. She was an interesting conversationalist. Far more went on inside that gorgeous head than he knew most people gave her credit for when they first met her. That applied to him as well.

  Yet, as the evening wore on, he also realized he didn’t know anything more about Marnie LaRue than he had that morning. She was a regular pro at saying a lot without really telling him anything substantial or revealing. Even the wine hadn’t loosened her tongue enough that she’d confided the real reason for her trip to Mexico.

  He topped off her glass with the remainder of the wine and hoped for the best.

  Then he nearly choked when she said, “So, are you a drug dealer or a bounty hunter?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A drug dealer or a bounty hunter? That’s the speculation of the locals given your nice little setup here. Or just plain crazy. My money’s on the third, but I could see the second. Not the first, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “I figure a drug dealer would have let me drown.”

  So, he had apparently become the topic of local gossip. That was something he hoped to avoid unless he wanted this little slice of isolation to become crowded with media and others seeking an audience with Jonathan Thomas Lundy. But J.T. found himself too intrigued by Marnie’s comments to worry over that fact right now.

  “So, if I were a drug dealer, I would have let you drown. But not if I were a bounty hunter?”

  “You’d be in the business of upholding the law, even if your methods might be somewhat unorthodox.” When he raised an eyebrow, she said, “I used to watch a lot of cable.”

  “What if
I’m just crazy?”

  She merely shrugged. “Never said you weren’t.”

  “Touché.”

  The conversation almost had him convinced she wasn’t a reporter. Surely by now she would have tried to sniff out more information on the Justice Department’s action. That left two other possibilities and he was leaning toward conniving woman when she said, “Your house seems a little nicer than the one I’m renting. And I notice you still have electricity.”

  This conversation was heading somewhere, he thought, as he replied slowly, “Yes, I do.”

  “And your shower, would the water be hot and clear or, say, brown and cold?”

  “Hot and clear. I just took a really long one a couple of hours ago. Felt wonderful.”

  “I’ll bet.” She made a little humming noise in the back of her throat. “You know, the man I rented my place from said it could be days before my power is restored and I’m leaving on Monday. Even if it does come back on before then, so that I can take a hot shower, the odds are good that my water will still be rusty.”

  “A pity.”

  “Isn’t it? I was wondering if you…might know a place where I could get a shower.”

  “Perhaps, but it will cost you.” The words were out before he could think better of them.

  “And the price?”

  Her tone was careful rather than flirtatious, but a few different scenarios sprang into J.T.’s mind anyway, not one of them clean enough for a PG-rating. He cleared his throat, wishing he could clear his head as well. But the prurient thoughts seemed to lodge themselves front and center in his brain like pesky burrs.

  “Answer a question for me.”

  “Should have guessed,” she muttered. But then she conceded with a smile. “For a long, hot shower, my life is an open book. Ask away.”

  He thought for a moment, trying to decide what he most wanted to know. More likely she would take pleasure in reminding him that he had only stipulated that she answer a question, singular, in trade for shower privileges. She struck him as a woman who paid close attention even when she seemed distracted or relaxed.

  “The suspense is killing me,” she teased when he remained silent.

  “Just trying to figure out what it is that I most want to know.”

  “They’re real,” she deadpanned and J.T. couldn’t help himself, he laughed out loud.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to ask. In fact, it never even crossed my mind that they might be anything other than authentic.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Of course, there is one sure method to prove that point beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  Her expression remained bland. “In your dreams, amigo.”

  And he had a feeling that was exactly what would be on his mind when he finally drifted off to sleep that night.

  “There’s a time limit on the question and you’re fast approaching it. After that you forfeit the right to ask and I get to take a shower anyway.”

  “Says who? It’s not like this is Jeopardy.”

  But all she said was, “Tick, tick, tick.”

  “Are you married?” he blurted out at last.

  The question hung in the cool air between them. J.T. wondered what had possessed him to ask it. What did it matter if she was taken? Much better questions were: Are you after something? Do you know who I really am?

  Still, he realized he had been holding his breath when she finally answered.

  “No. I have no husband.”

  She stood and began to walk back to her place.

  He hadn’t wanted Marnie there when she arrived earlier in the evening and yet he didn’t want her to leave now. He was bored, that was all. That was the only reason he wanted her to stay. Many adjectives came mind to describe Marnie LaRue, but boring was not one of them.

  “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” J.T. called after her.

  She stopped and turned back toward him, but she was far enough from the light of the torches now that he could no longer see her face.

  “You didn’t.”

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  “Just going to get my stuff. I can’t take a shower without my Loufa, bath gel, shampoo, conditioner and moisturizing lotion. Be right back.”

  As good as her word, Marnie tapped at his door five minutes later smiling brightly and toting a toiletry bag the size of his carry-on luggage.

  He staggered back a step in surprise and she took the opportunity to breeze inside, setting down the wheeled case, which she then rolled right over his toes.

  “I did say just a shower, right?” He pointed to the bag. “You look like you’re planning to move in.”

  “It’s just a few essentials,” she told him, blinking slowly and looking as innocent as a newborn baby. “I haven’t had a chance to pamper myself in a while, so I thought I’d go all out.”

  “The hot water heater only holds fifty gallons. That going to be enough?” He was trying for sarcasm, but she merely lifted an eyebrow.

  “I guess I’ll have to make do.”

  And it terrified J.T. that he had no idea if she was teasing.

  “Follow me.”

  He watched her eyes widen marginally as he led her to the master bath through the well-appointed interior of his outwardly humble home. She didn’t say a word for most of the way, but he knew that if Marnie LaRue had been curious about who he was and what he was doing in La Playa de la Pisada before, she was doubly so now.

  The home’s only bathroom could be entered from either the living room or the master bedroom. She broke the silence as they passed a row of framed and matted black and white photographs on the wall.

  “Is that you?”

  There were five shots in all, taken from the top of a ski slope in Aspen, Colorado. Even in black and white, they offered a breathtaking view. J.T. appeared in profile in only one of the shots, the last in the five arranged horizontally on the wall.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m no expert, but the photographer is very talented.”

  “She is that,” he said, smiling absently, as he thought about his younger sister, Anne. And then he decided it best to change the subject.

  “Fresh towels and washcloths are in the linen closet,” he said, pointing to a slim, distressed wood cabinet that ran from floor to the ceiling.

  “Thanks.” She put her case on the countertop, toed off her sandals and watched him with those slow-blinking eyes. It took J.T. a moment to realize she was waiting for him to leave.

  “Oh, uh, I’ll just…” he began, taking a step backward. The door had closed a quarter of the way, and the slim edge caught him in the back as he retreated.

  Marnie smiled, enjoying the fact that big, hulking J.T. seemed to have been thrown off balance. Never one to pass up an opportunity, she walked toward him, peeling off her sweater and then untucking the hem of her T-shirt as she came. It had been a long time since she’d played this kind of cat and mouse game with a member of the opposite sex, but she hadn’t lost her touch she decided smugly when she saw his Adam’s apple bob.

  As the coup de grace, she snagged the hem of her shirt with both hands and began to work it up. Slowly. She knew a moment of pure feminine power that J.T.’s gaze never strayed from the incremental progress.

  He may not be sure he likes me, and we may have started off on the wrong foot, but there’s no mistaking that he’s interested.

  When the shirt hem began to flirt with the lace edging on the underside of her bra, J.T. exhaled sharply and Marnie took devilish delight in stretching out her right leg and using her foot to shove the door closed in his face.

  “Be out in a bit,” she called sweetly.

  “Take your time. Please.”

  And she did. For the next hour, J.T. heard her in the bathroom, making do, as she’d called it. And, God help him, he couldn’t get his mind off her, that flirty little pseudo striptease she’d managed or how she would look standing in the middle of his shower, which, conveniently, was big enough for two. The stall was surrou
nded in mossy green marble he’d had shipped in special from Italy, with dual chrome heads that pumped pulsating streams of water from opposing vantage points. He pictured Marnie standing between them, water streaming over her curves in a sensuous cascade.

  After twenty minutes of mental torture and three hastily gulped glasses of ice water, he retreated to the den tucked just off the living room, deciding to put as much distance as possible between him and the sound of Marnie alternately humming and singing a medley of Motown tunes. He couldn’t fault her taste in music, he thought wryly, even if she did have a voice that was meant only for the shower.

  In the den, he booted up his computer and typed in his password. He had some files he needed to review and he might as well check his e-mail, anything to keep his mind off his beguiling houseguest.

  He was in the middle of going through a report from one of his senior vice presidents when he heard the bathroom door open. A moment later, Marnie appeared in the den, bringing the feminine scent of perfumed lotion with her. Hastily he signed off and then clicked closed the half dozen windows he had open on his computer screen.

  “Working?” she asked.

  She had one of his thick white towels wrapped turban style around her head and wore a pair of loose drawstring capris with a matching navy pullover. Nothing about the outfit was overtly sexy, but the whole package that made up Marnie LaRue was infinitely so.

  “Can’t let the bad guys get away now, can we?”

  He meant it to be teasing, but realized she took him seriously when she replied, “Must be an interesting line of work, being a bounty hunter.”

  “All work has its ups and downs.” He shrugged, deciding there was nothing wrong with being vague or employing a little subterfuge. They were, basic sexual attraction and the use of his shower notwithstanding, barely more than acquaintances.

  “And dangerous. Ever been shot at?”

  He thought about his competitors and what he considered their sympathizers at the Justice Department.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to get a round or two off at my expense, but I’ve been lucky so far.”