“He isn’t. He won’t.”
“How can you be so certain, Kate?” Sterling spoke for the first time.
“Call it women’s intuition, if you like. But I know. I’m sure. Didn’t you notice the change in Caroline?”
“Well…yes, now that you mention it, there was something different about her,” Jake replied slowly. “Like maybe she had on our forthcoming shades of makeup for spring or something. I do remember thinking she looked unusually attractive this morning.”
“Yes,” Sterling agreed. “So do I.”
Kate scowled momentarily at both men. “The two of you wouldn’t see a grizzly coming until it jumped up and bit you on the butt! Open your eyes, damn it! Caroline looked different because she didn’t have her hair done up in a French twist and she wasn’t hiding behind those big glasses she doesn’t need to begin with. And despite the fact that she was a little nervous—as any new bride is—she was not unhappy. She had the unmistakable glow of a woman falling in love. Only she doesn’t know it yet, so mind…you’re not to say anything to her! Or to Nick, either. Because unless I miss my guess—and I so very seldom do, you know—he’s as moonstruck as she is and perhaps not quite so ignorant of the fact. You mark my words, both of you. This marriage is going to turn out to be one of the best things I ever arranged! Why, I’m willing to wager that I get at least two grandchildren out of the deal, if not more!” Kate chortled gleefully at the thought. “Now, shoo! I’ve got honeymoon reservations to make and a wedding to start planning!”
Shaking their heads, bemused by her behavior, Jake and Sterling left her office—neither man daring to voice to the other the idea each harbored in his mind: that perhaps Kate was at last getting senile in her old age.
Kate, guessing what they were thinking, snorted scornfully to herself as they closed the door behind them. Men! she thought ruefully. They just never had a clue about anything, the poor darlings. Why, if she had her way, women would not only be running corporations—they’d be running the world!
Six
True to her word, Kate had placed the Fortune corporate jet at Caroline and Nick’s disposal. A limousine, also provided by Caroline’s grandmother, had ferried them to the airport. Another had collected them at their journey’s end and carried them here, to the Maplewood Lodge.
It was a beautiful, rustic retreat, set on the shores of a lake, amid a forest of maples. Instead of rooms, there were individual cabins, and it seemed to Caroline as the limousine lurched along the dirt trail rough with ice and snow that she and Nick had been assigned the most isolated and secluded of these.
“Grandmother must have come up here in the summer, when I’ll bet this place is just gorgeous,” Caroline remarked as she glanced out the tinted windows of the car, to which the lightly falling snow stuck briefly before being melted by the heater. “It probably didn’t even occur to her that it wouldn’t be quite the same in the winter.”
“It’s still lovely,” Nick said softly. “It reminds me of Russia.”
“You must miss your own country a lot.”
“Yes—but not enough to go back there permanently. And now, thanks to you, I won’t have to. I know my motive for wedding you was pretty damned selfish, Caro. But still, I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me.” His dark eyes appraised her warmly, so she blushed.
“Think nothing of it. Really. From my point of view, it was the only thing to do to save Grandmother’s secret youth formula. So my motive was pretty selfish, too, Nick.”
With a jolt caused by the rutted trail, the limousine at last rolled to a halt in front of their cabin. The driver got out to open their car door, while the bellboy who had accompanied them from the lodge disappeared into the cabin. Taking Caroline’s hand, Nick helped her from the limousine. Then, before she realized his intention, he swept her up in his strong arms to carry her across the yard and then the threshold of the cabin.
“Nick! Put me down, Nick!” she squealed, mortified by the wide grins that split the faces of the limousine driver and the bellboy as they watched her futile struggle to free herself.
“Hush, Caro,” Nick demanded. “And stop pounding me, for heaven’s sake! I’m only doing my duty as your new husband.” Inside the cabin, he finally set her on her feet, grinning as hugely as the other two men as he gazed down at her. His hand came up, gently brushing the sprinkling of snow from her hair. “A groom’s supposed to carry his bride across the threshold—or am I wrong about that being an American wedding custom?”
“No, you’re right. I…ah…just forgot about it, that’s all,” Caroline said lamely. For the truth was that since theirs was an arranged marriage, she hadn’t been expecting him to follow tradition. But as she was beginning to learn, there was nothing about Nick that she could take for granted. He continually surprised her.
While the limousine driver brought in their luggage and the groceries they had bought on their way to the lodge, the bellboy opened the curtains and turned on the furnace to warm the chilly cabin. Caroline stripped off her coat and gloves and took stock of her surroundings.
The cabin’s interior was not nearly as rustic as the exterior. In keeping with its backwoods theme, the furnishings were an eclectic mixture of primarily English and French Country; nevertheless, they were luxurious, reminding her of Nick’s house. Comfortable love seats flanked the fieldstone fireplace that soared to the heavy timber rafters. Antique cupboards, sideboards and tables were scattered throughout. Ornate rugs lay upon the hardwood floor. To one side of the living room was a small kitchen. Through a door on the opposite side of the room were the bedroom and bath.
By now, Nick had taken care of tipping the limousine driver and the bellboy, and they had departed, leaving the newlyweds alone together.
“Nick!” Caroline called out to him as she stared at the bedroom dominated by another fireplace, a huge, pinewood armoire and dresser, and a brass canopy bed covered with a beautiful handmade quilt in the wedding-ring pattern. “Nick! I think there’s been some mistake…that we must have been assigned to the wrong cabin.”
“Why’s that?” he asked as he joined her.
“Well, look. There’s—there’s only this one bedroom. That just can’t be right. Grandmother knows the circumstances of our marriage. That being the case, she would surely have arranged for a two-bedroom cabin. You’d better phone the front desk and tell them.”
“Tell them what, Caro? That even though we’re newlyweds, we’re not happy with the honeymoon cabin? Because that’s what the bellboy told me this cabin is. Look outside.” He motioned toward the windows, through which she could see that dusk had fallen and that the snow was coming down harder now. “Do you really want to go back out in that, baby? And what if the INS starts nosing around, sends somebody up here as part of their investigation of our marriage? Do you want them to find out we complained to the front desk on our wedding night and moved out of the honeymoon cabin into a two-bedroom one?”
“No, of course not,” she answered slowly, realizing how that would look to the INS.
“Then let’s just make the best of the situation, all right? I’ll sleep on one of the love seats or something.”
“That—that won’t be very comfortable for you.” Caroline pointed out this fact reluctantly, hoping he wasn’t going to interpret her words as an invitation to bed down with her. To make sure he didn’t, she continued. “I’m smaller than you. It only makes sense that I sleep on the love seat.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid chivalry demands that I be the one to make do without a bed. But don’t worry. I’ll manage somehow. Now, what do you say to our getting unpacked and then rustling up something to eat?”
“That sounds good to me.”
Following Nick back into the living room, Caroline saw that before leaving, the bellboy had turned on the lamps and built a fire in the hearth, which now blazed cheerfully, somehow giving the cabin the ambience of a lover’s retreat. As a result, she couldn�
�t seem to stop dwelling on the single bedroom.
What had her grandmother been thinking of? It wasn’t like Kate not to handle any matter competently—and Caroline just couldn’t imagine that under the circumstances, her grandmother would deliberately have instructed the lodge to book the honeymoon cabin. So either the lodge itself had made the error—or Kate was finally slipping into senility.
Caroline couldn’t believe this last. She didn’t want to believe it. The idea that her grandmother wouldn’t go on forever—omnipresent, intelligent and energetic—both frightened and dismayed her. No, the lodge had made a mistake, that was all.
“Why don’t you unpack first, Nick, while I put the groceries away,” Caroline suggested as she moved into the kitchen and switched on the soffit lights. They were fluorescent and flickered erratically for a moment before coming on, dispelling the loverlike atmosphere of the cabin, to her relief.
She began to take the groceries from the brown paper sacks sitting on the counter. On their way here, Nick had instructed the limousine driver to stop at one of the local markets. There, Caroline had loaded a cart with enough food to last the week, her grandmother having warned them that since the lodge’s dining room closed early and there was no twenty-four hour room service, they would be wise to have a few essentials on hand, especially if they wanted to do any cooking of their own.
“Each cabin comes equipped with a fully stocked kitchen,” Kate had explained. “So you’ll have everything you might need in the way of pots and pans and other utensils.”
Now, as Caroline opened the cabinets, she saw that this was indeed true. “How about if I fix a couple of these steaks tonight, Nick?” She held up a package wrapped in butcher’s paper.
“How about if we grill them together?” he replied, smiling at her. “After all, it’s our wedding night, so it doesn’t seem fair that just one of us should do the cooking.”
“I suppose we could order something in from the lodge,” she said tentatively.
“What? And make some poor fellow have to lug a heavy tray out here in the dark and in this weather? No, that’s too mean even to contemplate, baby,” Nick insisted. “He’s liable to slip on the icy ground, slide down into some overgrown ravine and be eaten by wolves or a bear attracted by our nuptial dinner. And probably, the poor guy’s bones won’t be found until spring. Besides, we’re newlyweds, remember? And honeymooners value their privacy. We’ve got all we need right here—and anyway, it’ll give us something to do.”
Caroline flushed as his dark eyes raked her appraisingly and an insolent grin curved his mouth, so she received the unmistakable impression that cooking was really the last thing he wanted to be doing on his wedding night. It wasn’t exactly how, over the years, she had envisioned spending this evening, either. But then, she had never dreamed of an arranged marriage in name only or anything else that had occurred these past few days. She still felt as though she were caught up in some wild dream, riding upon some crazy carousel. But would it prove to have a brass ring—and if it did, could she, would she, be able to grab it?
She didn’t know.
To take her mind off the fact that she was totally alone with a very attractive, virile man who just happened to be her husband, Caroline concentrated on putting away the groceries. She was relieved when Nick disappeared into the bedroom to unpack. His effect upon her was nothing short of devastating. She didn’t know how she was going to endure being alone here in this cabin with him for an entire week.
She would like to give the reservation clerk at the front desk a piece of her mind for making such an error about the cabin, she thought, annoyed, her nerves jumping.
Nick Valkov plus one bedroom. For a week.
She didn’t need to be a chemist to figure out that that was undoubtedly an explosive equation.
Seven
Caroline unbagged the fresh spinach and the romaine, red and butter lettuces and started to tear off their leaves, filling the sink with cold water to rinse them. She would make a tossed salad to go with the steaks, she decided, and a couple of twice-baked potatoes and a vegetable. A medley of steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots would be good. Then she realized she didn’t know if Nick liked any of those foods.
“I do,” he announced moments later when she asked him. “Your turn to unpack. Tomatoes and purple onions in the salad?”
“You read my mind,” Caroline called back lightly over her shoulder as she headed toward the bedroom.
There, she unlocked her two Louis Vuitton cases and began to put her clothes away. Nick, she saw, had left her more than half of the closet space and the entire armoire, taking the dresser for himself. That spoke well of him, she thought. It showed he was considerate and knew how to share. His own garments were hung and folded neatly, another mark in his favor. Thank heavens he wasn’t a slob! She couldn’t have lived with that.
There was so much she didn’t know about Nick, Caroline belatedly recognized. Three days. She had only known him, really, for three days. Even now, it was hard for her to believe she had actually married him this morning. But she had, she thought as she hung her own clothes in the closet and folded others to tuck them into the armoire. He wasn’t anything at all like what she had previously imagined.
Now she realized how lucky she was that he was a decent man. But of course, her grandmother would never have suggested this marriage if she had believed Nick to be anything other than that, Caroline grasped slowly. In fact, now that she thought about it, she knew Kate must think extremely highly of Nick—and not just as a chemist, either, but also as a man. Because there was no way her grandmother would have married her off to just anyone, sent her away with him, alone, to an isolated place like the Maplewood Lodge for a week—not even to save the secret youth formula.
That realization lessened some of the anxiety Caroline had felt ever since discovering that the cabin had only one bedroom. She returned to the kitchen to find the steaks cooking on the grill and Nick tossing the salad. She pitched in by cutting up the vegetables and preparing the potatoes. From the ease with which she and Nick worked together in the kitchen, she thought that anyone observing them would believe they had been married for years instead of for less than a day.
“Do you want to be very formal and dine at the table?” he inquired as he expertly flipped the steaks. “Or would you rather eat casually on the coffee table, in front of the fireplace?”
“You mean like at a slumber party?” Caroline suggested—then could have bitten off her tongue. She blushed crimson with embarrassment at Nick’s mocking grin.
“Well, if that’s what you have in mind, baby…”
“It’s not! And what’s more, you know it!” To avoid his amused but smoldering gaze, she lifted the pot lid, pretending to check on the vegetables steaming on the stove.
“Ah. Do I, now? For all I know, it might have been a Freudian slip.”
“It wasn’t,” Caroline insisted, still flushed, her heart thrumming so crazily that she felt as though it might leap from her breast. She thumped the lid back onto the pot. “It’s just that I associate eating on a coffee table with girlish things like slumber parties. It’s what my sisters and I used to do when we were in our teens…pop corn, lounge around the fireplace, tell spooky stories. You know? Like the one about the mysterious girl at the high school prom who turns out to have been killed in a car accident on prom night years before, or the lovers parked in the woods and the escaped convict with a steel hook for a hand, who creeps up on them….” Her voice trailed away as she watched Nick’s shoulders begin to shake with merriment before he actually burst out laughing, a deep, rich sound.
“This is what American teenage girls do for fun at slumber parties?” he asked.
“Well, yes, among other things,” Caroline confirmed reluctantly, abashed.
“Such as?”
“Such as sticking the hands of the girls who fall asleep in bowls of ice water and freezing their underwear— Oh, God! It all sounds so terribly silly, does
n’t it? I can’t believe I actually used to do things like that.”
“Neither can I,” Nick declared, still grinning. “Perhaps it’s just as well that I will be relegated to an uncomfortable night on one of the love seats. Because I certainly don’t want to awaken in the morning and find my boxer shorts as stiff as a board. Why, Caro, have I said something amiss? You’re blushing again. I meant only that you might be tempted to stick them into the freezer, should I be so foolish as to fall asleep….”
From the way his dark eyes danced wickedly, she knew that was not what he had meant. And it was certainly not the image his words had conjured up in her mind, but a sexy picture of Nick naked save for his underwear—and highly aroused. Unwittingly, she speculated about his boxer shorts, whether they were silk….
Good God, what was the matter with her? Caroline wondered, bewildered—and somehow excited despite herself. She didn’t normally dwell on thoughts of sex or engage in risqué conversation with a man. And this man was her husband. Why, he might take her behavior as an invitation to crawl into her bed later!
Why in the hell did he have to be so damnably male and attractive, anyway?
Chemists were supposed to be dull, boring fuddy-duddies or wild, eccentric fruitcakes, weren’t they? Puttering around in dusty, cluttered old laboratories, amid piles of moldering books and a jumbled array of boiling beakers. They didn’t wear Armani suits and smoke Player’s cigarettes and drink Stolichnaya vodka. They didn’t grill steaks and make licentious remarks and set anything besides a Bunsen burner aflame—certainly not a cool, sophisticated woman such as herself!
That dumb, smirking bellboy had just turned the cabin’s thermostat up way too high—and combined with the heat from the oven, the stove and the fireplace, it was simply too much, that was all. Why, it was practically roasting in the cabin, Caroline thought. She should take off the sweater she had tossed on over her blouse earlier. No, she couldn’t do that. Nick might deliberately misconstrue that action, too.
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