Now it was Beth’s fault he was looking. Yes, there was a natural slenderness about her. But if those curves were a recent acquisition, then childbirth was this lady’s best friend.
He suddenly realized that both women were looking at him. God, had he made some sound? Hell, had he moaned?
Clearing his throat, he made a point of looking at his watch again. He couldn’t remember when Beth had arrived, but obviously she’d been here too long.
She took a sip of tea and the hint. “I should be going. I have to get back to the bakery.”
“The bakery?” Michael frowned and watched Lisa slip from the room and shut his office door. “That’s right. You said you worked there. You’re not back on the job already?”
She rose to her feet. “Bea and Millie need me.”
An unfamiliar discomfort edged down his spine. “You need rest. Bea and Millie can do without you a while longer.”
Her smile was polite as she carefully set the cup on the edge of his desk. “Thank you again for the loan of the jacket—and everything else you did for me.”
He didn’t like her heading out into the cold just yet. “Don’t you want to know about Sabrina?”
She paused in picking up her ratty parka.
“Is that jacket warm enough? Would you like to keep the sheepskin one?”
She shook her head vehemently. “What about Sabrina?”
“Thanks to you, we found out she was in town. Even where she was staying.” Guilt ran through him. He should have stopped by and told Beth what they’d discovered. Brought something for the kid. But he’d been so determined to quash the rumors flying around town that he’d avoided anything to do with her. “Sabrina’s disappeared again, though.”
In the process of zipping her coat, Beth’s hands stilled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I hope you find her.” She dug into her pocket and fished out some keys.
Michael thought of Beth driving back to the bakery. “Is your car heater still on the fritz? I could have someone—”
“It’s working again.” She wound the scarf around her neck.
“You don’t have time for a longer visit?” He didn’t know what the hell prompted him to say that.
She cocked her head and looked at his cluttered desk. “Looks to me like you don’t have time for a longer visit.”
He followed her gaze. “That. It’s nothing.” Just the leash that chained him to the Oil Works. “You haven’t even told me about your son.” Michael looked at the still-sleeping baby. His face was rounder now, and as Michael watched the baby’s lips pursed and made sucking motions.
“I call him Mischa.”
Strange, the disappointment that stabbed him. “You changed his name,” Michael said.
Beth shook her head. “No, it’s just a nickname. The Slavic form of yours.”
She wheeled the shabby stroller toward the door, and he noticed that one wheel listed to the side. He couldn’t think of another reason for her to stay.
“You didn’t want to call him Michael?” The stupid question just popped out.
Her back to him, she paused. Then she looked over her shoulder and he saw color in her cheeks that matched the heart red scarf around her neck. “I guess I thought that there was only one of those,” she said before leaving.
From his office windows, Michael watched Beth transfer the baby from the stroller to her car and drive away. Then he slowly walked through his door to the outer office. Lisa stood by the fax machine.
His secretary was married and had a couple of kids. He remembered her taking maternity leave each time. Something like three months. Maybe more.
“Isn’t a woman supposed to take it easy after she has a baby?”
Lisa picked up the fax and quickly scanned it. “After giving birth, a woman deserves a maid and her mother for at least six months.”
“She’s not supposed to start work right away then.”
Lisa shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t have any choice. A woman might need the money.”
Ratty coat. Stroller with listing wheels. Car with unreliable heater. “I don’t like it,” Michael muttered.
“Oh, boss, you’re going to not like this even more.” Lisa smacked the fax against his hand.
Michael took it, still thinking of Beth and Mischa. He read it once, started, read through it again.
Joseph Wentworth was proposing naming Michael Wentworth Acting CEO of Wentworth Oil Works. Jack’s old job.
Damn.
Michael crumpled the fax in his fist. The old bastard. He thought he’d permanently tie Michael to the company and the family so easily.
“He’s not going to get away with it, Lisa.”
She looked skeptical. “Don’t know what you’re going to do about it, boss.”
Michael three-pointed the balled paper into the trash can beside Lisa’s desk. His gaze snagged on her In box. Another photocopy of that three-week-old Daily Post photo. Somebody had drawn a cartoon bubble over his head in the picture. He didn’t bother reading what was written inside.
Great. A three-minute visit and the jokes were starting up again already.
That was the last thing he needed. Acting CEO and more speculation about the end of his bachelorhood.
The end of his bachelorhood. Michael froze, an Einstein-caliber idea crystalizing in his mind. Okay, Elijah had mentioned it first, but Michael was the only one who could make it a reality.
“Wentworth, you are a genius,” he whispered to himself. “With this idea everybody wins.”
Half an hour to carefully consider the idea. Ten minutes to the Freemont Springs Bakery. One and a half minutes to find out that Beth was in her apartment and to knock on the door at the top of the stairs.
Only an instant more and she opened the door.
With the January cold at his back and her puzzled expression facing him, Michael cut right to the chase. “Marry me,” he said.
Beth stared at Michael, not even taking in his words, only aware of the threadbare robe wrapped around her shower-wet body and the dual drops of chilly water escaping from the towel turban to roll down her neck.
Did the man take some kind of sadistic pleasure in barging in on her when she wasn’t at her best? At least she’d been in her favorite jeans and sweater when she’d visited his office, but upon her arrival home, Mischa had spit up all over her neck and shoulder—requiring the day’s second shower.
Come to think of it, she should be surprised Michael had caught her after the spit up.
“Did you hear what I said?” He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, bringing him closer than she liked.
She stepped back, her hands tightening the sash at her waist. In a dark suit and muted tie he looked like the board members who had visited the orphanage from time to time, not a man who’d just proposed marriage.
Marriage? Beth swallowed and took another step back. “What did you say?”
“I asked you to marry me.”
Beneath her pink-striped robe, chills trailed down her arms from shoulders to wrists. “You didn’t ask,” she stated, replaying the words in her head. “I think you just said, ‘Marry me.’”
“Right.” He grinned.
The smile tossed her insides like confetti. Beth crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself to warm away a second swathe of goose bumps. “This isn’t making sense,” she said. She glanced toward the crib where Mischa made the little grunting noises that signaled he was waking up.
“Makes perfect sense,” Michael answered. Without asking, he strode across the room and dropped onto the flowery love seat, his long legs and wide shoulders taking over the only seating in the room. “Everybody wins.”
Beth crossed to the crib and took Mischa in her arms before his grunts became a full-blown cry. He blinked at her and she rubbed her nose against his. “Hi, baby,” she whispered to give herself another minute.
Holding Mischa against her heart like armor, she faced Michael. “I’m not following. What exactly are you talk
ing about?”
He slapped his hands against his thighs and jumped up from the love seat. “It’s because I’m just so damn happy with the idea.” He grinned again. “I should have thought of this weeks ago.”
Damn happy? He appeared that way, boyish and delighted, and a little thrill rushed through her. How long had it been since a man looked at her like that? Laughing, excited, as if she were the one he wanted. She ran the conversation through her mind again.
He wanted to marry her, he said.
She put Mischa in the infant seat on the tiny coffee table then self-consciously tugged the towel from her hair. “I’m sorry…I just got out of the shower.”
He wanted to marry her, he said.
That boyish grin widened on his face. “I don’t care what you look like. I just want to get your name on a marriage certificate.”
Marriage. Belonging to someone. Making a family with Michael and Mischa. Dreams she’d thought long dried up bloomed instantly in her mind. “You can’t mean it,” she whispered, though her imagination put him in her home, her bed, his strong hands touching the pale skin of her body. Even though Michael was a near-stranger, the image made her stomach quiver.
“Of course I mean it. You. Me. Marriage of convenience. Isn’t that what they call it?”
Lord, his good humor was so infectious she almost smiled back. Then reality set in. “A marriage of convenience?”
“Right. We’ll sign an ironclad prenup, but then we’ll marry, I’ll get out of the company, get the trust, get the ranch, and finally give you your freedom and enough cash that you and Mischa will be set for life.”
Again, he said it all with such certainty that she nearly agreed. “Wait a minute.” She rubbed the towel briskly through her wet hair as if that might rub some sense back into the conversation. “And you also have some oceanfront Oklahoma property to sell me, I presume?”
With one stride he was before her. “I’ve got a cantankerous, patriarchal grandfather who refuses to see he belongs at the head of the family business and I don’t, okay?” Michael speared his fingers through his hair. “I’ve got to force his hand or else he’ll make himself sick looking into my brother Jack’s death and he’ll make me nuts tying me to a desk at Wentworth Oil.”
Beth had heard about Jack Wentworth’s untimely death. She’d even been aware of Joseph Wentworth’s reputation as a stubborn but successful businessman. “I still don’t get how I fit in.” Why had Michael come to her?
“Just more of the Wentworth ties that bind—a trust fund I can’t get to for three more years. Unless I’m married.”
Then he told her about the ranching operation he wanted to go into with his friend Elijah. Quarter horses. Studs. What she knew about ranching came from late-night TV Westerns, yet the unleashed enthusiasm in his voice painted a vivid picture of his dream.
“And where am I in all this again?” she asked, finally surfacing from his deluge.
He held his hands out at his sides, smiling once more. “The temporary wife.”
Beth swallowed. “You don’t think a marriage should be for—” she twisted the towel in her fists “—love?”
Grimacing, Michael waved the thought away. “Save the sap for greeting cards.”
“You don’t—”
“Don’t say any more,” he said. “Just think. My grandfather gets what he needs. I get what I need. You get what you need.”
And what exactly is that? Beth thought. She wrung the towel again. “I don’t see—”
“That’s the problem.” Michael grabbed the loose end of the towel in her hands and tugged her closer to him. “You’re not seeing what I’m seeing.”
His eyes were a deep brown ringed in gold. He smelled like the sheepskin jacket had—warm, exciting, male. “And how is that?” Beth asked, licking her lips to wet them. “How is it that you see me?” She felt suddenly womanly and feminine and as if the world were lying on its side. Air couldn’t find her lungs.
Suddenly, he dropped his end of the towel and backed away. “As a person who could use some help.” Another step back and his gaze searched the room to light on Mischa. “As a mother with a baby—my namesake—to take care of.”
The world righted itself after that. The whole thing became clear. Michael wanted a convenient, temporary wife and he’d thought of her. Because of Mischa. Because he pitied her. He hadn’t seen her as an individual, as a woman at all.
Well, she’d taken handouts for the first eighteen years of her life. Five years ago she’d sworn never to do it again.
She was relieved to discover that Michael took no for an answer quite politely.
Michael halted at the bottom of the stairs to Beth’s apartment.
What the hell is wrong with me?
He never took no for an answer.
Maybe it was her short hairstyle that put him off his game. Or the distracting scent of soap on her naked skin. That thin robe—
He groaned and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. To be this close and then to lose it!
Where had he gone wrong? Hadn’t he laid out the advantages? Explained that it would be a temporary commitment ending in financial security for her and Mischa?
Ask her again. His business-school-honed senses urged him back up the stairs.
And some other instinct warned him away.
A beautiful woman. A child carrying his name. Hell, even if they stayed married just a few months, how difficult would it be to regain his bachelor status?
Easy, his common sense responded. Wentworths never had trouble with women.
And that other talking instinct snickered. There’s always a first time.
Still undecided, Michael heard the telephone ring in Beth’s apartment upstairs, followed by Mischa’s cry. Michael found himself halfway up the steps by the time the phone stopped ringing and Beth was calling “Hello?” over the increasing wail of the baby.
Outside the flimsy apartment door he heard her end of the conversation with a Mr. Stanley, obviously a would-be landlord. Even with only one half of the conversation audible, Michael could tell Mr. Stanley wasn’t a patient man.
He didn’t want to let her call him back later.
He wanted to know if the baby cried like that often.
There was also something about diapers and garbage that made absolutely no sense.
And finally he heard Beth lose out on what apparently had been the only Freemont Springs apartment available in her price range.
A more polite man wouldn’t have eavesdropped.
A kinder man would have let her face her trouble privately.
But Michael hadn’t grown up at Joseph Wentworth’s manipulative knee for nothing.
He knocked again on Beth’s door and went for the throat.
Her face looked paler than it had a few minutes ago. She stared at him, dazed. “I wanted Mischa to grow up here,” she said as he walked in and shut the door. “Freemont is his middle name because I wanted him never to forget where he belongs.”
Michael touched her elbow to guide her to the tiny couch. She sat down without any other prompting, the baby curled in the curve of her arm.
“You like it here, then?” he said casually.
“My car blew two tires just outside of town. It had made it all the way from L.A., asking only for gas, oil and water until I passed the sign saying Entering Freemont Springs.” One hand fluttered. “Then poof!” She grimaced. “Or should I say pop?”
“You decided to stay?”
She nodded. “I didn’t have the money for a pair of tires. And Alice always said that when you break an egg you better make an omelette.”
Michael let Alice and the omelette thing go. “And Mischa’s the New Year’s baby. Freemont Springs is his town.”
She frowned. “I thought so. It’s so family-friendly here. It felt so right for us. But I just lost the only place I’ve found to live that I can afford.”
He hated her unhappiness. “There’s always that simple solution.”
Her eyebrows were silky blond and came together in a frown. “What simple solution?”
“Marry me, Beth,” he said quietly.
“That’s simple?”
Even though her eyelashes hid her gaze, he thought she softened. He didn’t know how he knew, but something flowed between them, something that had started that night when he held her hands in the hospital. Maybe it began before that, when her finger had touched his cheek. Or when he’d first seen her moonlight hair.
“Just temporarily.” He swallowed at the hoarseness in his voice. “But you’ll end up with enough money so you can stay. Do it for Mischa, Beth.” He went in for the kill. “So Mischa can belong to his town.”
She looked up. The turquoise blue of her eyes startled him again. “I don’t know.” The baby had drifted off against her shoulder and she walked over to the crib, the most luxurious item in the room. Mischa snuggled down without a whimper.
Beth slowly turned to face Michael. The apartment was so small she seemed only an arm’s length away. She pursed her lips. “Alice did always say that when opportunity’s at the door to open it widely…”
Michael rapped an imaginary door. “Knock knock.”
She looked back at the baby. She looked at him.
Say yes, Michael willed.
“Yes.”
In a strange flood of relief and anticipation, that arm’s length between them disappeared. His hands wrapped around Beth’s upper arms—too thin, he registered. He brought her against his chest, her breasts full against him, and his mouth touched the corner of her lips.
That’s all.
That wasn’t enough. Because she inhaled a surprised breath, and somehow the sound was excited, exciting, and his mouth moved and her lips softened and he was truly kissing her.
4
Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Alice, the woman who had taken care of the children in Beth’s age group at the Thurston Home for Girls, had never spoken that particular adage, but it echoed in Beth’s head nonetheless. Maybe because now, five days after Michael’s proposal and two hours after their 3:00 p.m. city hall wedding, she finally had time to listen to herself think.
The Millionaire and the Pregnant Pauper Page 4