The CEO's Accidental Bride

by Barbara Dunlop

  Now, he felt like a heel.

  “I used to wonder who she was,” Kaitlin mused softly, half to herself. “A runaway princess. An orphan. Maybe a prostitute.” Then her voice grew stronger, a trace of wry humor in its depths. “Perhaps I’m descended from a hooker and her customer. What do you suppose that means?”

  Zach brushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead. “I think it means you have a vivid imagination.”

  “It could be true,” Kaitlin insisted.

  “I suppose.” Since the idea didn’t seem to upset her, his fingertips went back to tracing a pattern on her stomach. “I guess I’m the rouge pirate, and you’re the soiled dove.” He brushed his knuckles against the skin beneath her bare breast. “Just so you know. That’s working for me.”

  She lifted a pillow and halfheartedly thwacked him in the side of the head. “Everything seems to work for you.”

  “Only when it comes to you.” He tossed the pillow out of the way, acknowledging the words were completely true. He leaned up and gently stroked her face. “Were you adopted?”

  She was silent for a long moment, while her clouded jade eyes put a hundred lonely images into his brain. He regretted the question, but he couldn’t call it back.

  “Foster homes,” she finally told him.

  The simple words made his chest thump with regret. He thought back to all the heirlooms he’d shown her. The family history. The portraits, the cemetery.

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her. “I can’t believe I threw my castle up in your face.”

  “You didn’t know,” she repeated.

  “I wish I had.”

  “Well, I wish I’d grown up in a castle.” Her spunk was back, and the strength of character surprised and impressed him. “But that’s the way it goes,” she concluded.

  “We had extra rooms and everything,” he teased in an attempt to keep things light.

  “Could you not have come and found me sooner?”

  He sobered, completely serious. “I wish I had.”

  Her grin slowly faded, but not to sadness.

  His own want growing, he shifted forward and kissed her lips, drawing her tenderly but fully into his arms again, feeling aroused and protective all at the same time. “Was it awful?” he had to risk asking.

  “It was lonely,” she whispered into the crook of his neck. Then she coughed out a laugh and arched away. “I can’t believe I’m telling this to you…you of all people.”

  “What about me?” He couldn’t help feeling vaguely hurt.

  “You’re the guy who’s ruining my life.”

  “Huh?”

  She glanced around his room and spread her arms wide. “What the hell have we done?”

  “We’re married,” he responded.

  “By Elvis.” She suddenly clambered out of bed.

  He didn’t want her to go, couldn’t let her go.

  “My robe?” she asked.

  “Downstairs.”

  She swore.

  “You don’t have to leave,” he pointed out. She could stay here, sleep here, lay here in his arms all night long.

  She turned to face him, still naked, still glorious, still the most amazing person he’d ever met.

  “This was a mistake,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

  He climbed out the opposite side of the bed to face her. “It may have made things a little more complicated,” he conceded.

  “A little more complicated?”

  “Nothing needs to change.”

  “Everything just changed.” She spotted his shirt, discarded on the floor, and scooped it up. “We never should have given into chemistry, Zach. Just so you know, this doesn’t mean you have an advantage over me.”

  “What?” He wasn’t following her logic.

  “I have to call Lindsay.” She glanced around the room. “She’s probably downstairs. She’s probably wondering where the heck I’ve gone.”

  “Lindsay’s not downstairs,” Zach announced with certainty.

  Kaitlin pulled his big shirt over her head. “How would you know that?”

  Zach made his way around the foot of the bed. “Lindsay’s not coming back here tonight.”

  “But—” Kaitlin stilled. After a second, she seemed to correctly interpret the meaningful look in his eyes. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You sure they did?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” Zach had known Dylan his entire life. He’d seen the way Dylan looked at Lindsay. He’d also seen the way Lindsay looked back.

  Kaitlin still seemed skeptical. “She said she wouldn’t sleep with him until he admitted he was a pirate.”

  Zach barked out a laugh at an absurd memory. “I guess that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “The Jolly Roger flying over the pool house.”

  Kaitlin fought a grin and lost. “I want my ten bucks.”

  He moved closer, desperate to take her back into his arms. “Katie, you can have anything you want.”

  She gazed up at him. “I want to renovate your building. My way.” Then she paused, tilting her head. “This has been a recorded message.”

  “I guess adding the condition that you sleep with me to seal the deal would be inappropriate?”

  “And illegal.”

  “I’m a pirate, what the hell do I care about legal?”

  She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t move away, either.

  He curled his hands into fists to keep from touching her. “Sleep with me, Katie.”

  She hesitated, and he held his breath.

  Her gaze darted in all directions, while her teeth trapped her bottom lip.

  He was afraid to push, afraid not to.

  Finally, he tossed caution to the wind, reaching out, snagging a handful of his shirt, drawing her to him and wrapping her deep in his arms. “I can’t let you go yet.”

  Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.

  “It was the best pie I have ever tasted,” Lindsay said to Kaitlin, her voice bubbling through the Gilby kitchen while Ginny scooped flour into a big steel bowl.

  “My grandmother taught me that recipe,” said Ginny, wiping her hands on a voluminous white apron that covered her red-and-white polka-dot dress. She had red-heeled pumps to match, and a spray of lace and plastic cherries was pinned into her hair as a small hat.

  Kaitlin was fairly certain Ginny thought it was 1952.

  “It’s the chill on the lard, you know,” Ginny continued her instructions, seeming to be in her element with the two younger women as baking students. “You need the temperature, the cutting, the mixing. Half in first. Like this.”

  “Do you refrigerate it?” asked Kaitlin, glancing from the stained recipe card to the bowl, watching Ginny’s hands closely as they mixed the ingredients. She and Lindsay had been given the task of cutting and peeling apples and floating them in a bowl of cold water.

  Ginny giggled. “That’s the secret, girls.” She lowered her voice, glancing around as if to make sure they were alone in the big Gilby kitchen. “We keep it in the wine cellar.”

  Lindsay grinned at Kaitlin, and Kaitlin grinned right back, thoroughly enjoying herself. Nobody had ever taught her to bake before. She’d watched a few cooking shows, and sometimes made cupcakes from a mix, but mostly she bought Sugar Bob’s and she sure never had a sweet old lady walk her through a traditional family recipe.

  “Best way to trap a man,” said Ginny. “Feed him a good pie.”

  “Were you ever married?” asked Kaitlin. Ginny used the Gilby last name, but that might not mean anything. And she certainly seemed obsessed with getting men.

  “Me?” Ginny scoffed. “No. Never.”

  “But you make such a great pie,” Lindsay joked. “I would think you’d have to fight them off with a stick.”

  “Keep peeling,” Ginny admonished her. “There’s also the sex, you know.”

  Lindsay looked confused. “But yesterday you said we weren’t supposed to—”

&nb
sp; Ginny’s sharp glare cut her off. “You didn’t have sex with him, did you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Kaitlin shot Lindsay an expression of disbelief.

  Lindsay returned a warning squint.

  “Good girl,” said Ginny, smiling all over again. “That was my problem. Always slept with them, never married them.”

  “You had lovers?” The question jumped out of Kaitlin before she could censor it. When Ginny was young, lovers must have been something scandalous.

  “Dustin Cartwell,” said Ginny on a sigh, getting a faraway look in her eyes as she dreamily cut the lard and shortening into the flour mixture inside the bowl. “And Michael O’Conner. Phillip Magneson. Oh, and that Anderson boy, Charlie.”

  “Go, Ginny,” sang Lindsay.

  “Never met one I wanted to keep,” said Ginny with a shake of her white-haired head. “They fart, you know. Drop their underwear on the floor. And the snoring? Don’t get me started on the snoring.” She added another scoop of lard. “Now, we’ll be making this half into chunks the size of peas. Keeps it flaky.”

  Kaitlin met Lindsay’s gaze again, her body shaking with suppressed laughter. Ginny was an absolute blast.

  Her attention abruptly off men and sex, and back onto the baking, she let each of them cut in some of the lard, then she showed them how to sprinkle on the water, keeping everything chilled. They rolled out the dough, cut it into pie pans, mixed the apples with cinnamon, sugar and corn starch, then made a latticework top.

  In the end, both Kaitlin and Lindsay slid decent-looking pies into the oven.

  “You don’t want to be sharing that with Zachary,” Ginny warned Kaitlin. Then she paused, a flash of confusion crossing her face. “Oh, my. You married him, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Kaitlin admitted. And after last night, the marriage was feeling frighteningly real.

  Ginny patted her on the arm. “Wish you’d come and talked with me first.”

  “Is there something wrong with Zach?” Kaitlin couldn’t help but ask. Ginny had been alluding to Zach’s lack of desirability since they arrived.

  “Those Harper boys are heartbreakers,” said Ginny with a disapproving click of her tongue. “Always have been, always will be.”

  Kaitlin had to admit, she could easily see Zach breaking hearts. He’d been darn near perfect last night. He’d driven through the dark to rescue her from a storm, then made exquisite love to her, teased her and sympathized with her. If a woman were to let herself fall for a man like that, heartbreak might well be the inevitable outcome.

  Ginny turned to Lindsay. “Now, my Dylan. That one’s a catch. He’s wealthy, you know.”

  “I do have my own money,” said Lindsay.

  Ginny chuckled and gave a coquettish smile. “A girl can never have too much money.”

  Lindsay was obviously puzzled. “You don’t mind me marrying your great-nephew for his money?”

  Ginny looked askance. “What other reason is there?”

  Lindsay’s brows went up. “Love?”

  “Oh, pooh, pooh.” Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “Love comes and goes. A bank balance, now there’s something a gal can count on.”

  “Your lovers didn’t have money?” Kaitlin asked, fascinated by Ginny’s experiences and opinions.

  A sly look entered Ginny’s eyes, and once again she glanced around the kitchen as if checking for eavesdroppers. “They had youth and enthusiasm. I think they wanted my money.”

  “Do you have any pictures?” asked Lindsay, obviously as interested as Kaitlin in the older woman’s love life.

  “Indeed, I do.” Ginny wiped her hands on the big apron, untying it from the back. Then she beckoned both women to follow her as she made her way toward the kitchen door.

  In the stairwell, Kaitlin asked, “Did the other Harper men break women’s hearts?”

  “Every single one,” Ginny confirmed with a decisive nod.

  “But not their wives.” Kaitlin’s tone turned the statement into a question.

  “Sometimes their wives, too.”

  “What about Sadie? Wasn’t Sadie happy with Milton?”

  “Milton was a fine man. He’d have made a good lover. But once they were married, Sadie, she worried all the time.”

  “That he was unfaithful?” asked Kaitlin.

  Ginny stopped midstair and turned on her. “Oh, no. A Harper man would never be unfaithful.” She turned and began climbing again.

  “Then why did Sadie worry?”

  “She was the groundskeeper’s daughter. Oh, she pretended all right. But at her heart, she was never the mistress of the castle. That’s why she wouldn’t make any changes.”

  They came to the second floor, and Ginny led them down a wide hallway. Overhead skylights let in the sunshine, while art objects lined the shelves along the way.

  “The castle is really beautiful,” said Kaitlin. She wasn’t sure she’d have changed anything, either.

  “So was Sadie,” said Ginny in a wistful voice. “Before Milton, we swam naked in the ocean and ran across the sand under the full moon.”

  “Do you really think he broke her heart?” Kaitlin persisted. Like Emma, Kaitlin really wanted to believe Sadie had been happy here.

  “No. Not really. But sometimes she felt trapped, and sometimes she worried.” Ginny swept open the double doors of a closet. She moved aside a fluffy quilt and extracted a battered shoebox, opening it to reveal a stack of photographs. “Ah, here we are. Come meet my lovers.”

  Nine

  Zach found Kaitlin in the portrait gallery, gazing at a painting of his grandmother when she had been in her twenties.

  “Hey,” he said, coming up behind her. He didn’t ask and didn’t wait for permission before wrapping his arms around her waist, nestling her into the cradle of his body.

  “Do you think she was happy?” Kaitlin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she love your grandfather?”

  “As far as I could tell.” He hadn’t spent much time looking at the portraits over the past years, and his memory of his grandmother was that of an old woman. He’d forgotten how lovely she was. No wonder his grandfather had married her so young.

  “Ginny says she felt trapped sometimes.”

  “I love Ginny dearly,” Zach began, a warning in his tone.

  There was a thread of laughter in Kaitlin’s voice when she interrupted him. “She doesn’t seem too crazy about you.”

  “But you know she’s not all there, right?”

  “She’s a blast,” Kaitlin responded. “And her memory seems very sharp.”

  “Well, it had to be a pretty big cage. They went to Europe at least twice a year, and spent half their time in Manhattan. You should have seen the garden parties. The governor, theatre stars, foreign diplomats.”

  “Okay, so it was a big cage,” Kaitlin conceded.

  “Come here. Let me show you something.” Zach shifted his arm around her shoulders, guiding her down the gallery toward the staircase.

  “Your room?” she asked.

  “No. But I like the way you’re thinking.” He steered her down to the first floor then back through the hallways to Sadie’s parlor.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I want to show you that she was happy.”

  He sat Kaitlin on the settee and retrieved an old photo album from Sadie’s bookcase. Sitting next to her, he flipped through the pages until he came to one of the Harpers’ famous garden parties. The pictures were black and white, slightly faded, but they showed the gardens in their glory, and the sharp-dressed upper crust of New York nibbling finger sandwiches and chatting away the afternoon.

  “That’s her.” Zach pointed to his grandmother in a flowing dress and a silk flower-brimmed hat. Her smile was bright, and Zach’s grandfather Milton had a hand tucked against the small of her back.

  “She does look happy,” Kaitlin was forced to admit.

  “And that’s a hedge, not prison bars,” said Zach.

/>   Kaitlin elbowed him in the ribs. “The bars are metaphorical.”

  “The hedge is real. So were the trips to Europe.”

  Kaitlin flipped the page, coming to more party photos, people laughing, drinking punch, playing croquet and wandering through the rose garden. There was a band in the gazebo, and a few couples were dancing on the patio. Some of the pictures showed children playing.

  “That’s my father,” said Zack, smiling to himself as he pointed out the five-year-old boy in shorts, a white shirt and suspenders standing next to the duck pond. He had a rock in his hand, and one of his shoes was missing. He looked as if he was seconds away from wading after the ducks.

  Kaitlin chuckled softly. “Were you anything like that as a child?”

  Zach rose to retrieve another album.

  “Here.” He let her open it and page her way through the pictures of him as a young child.

  “You were adorable,” she cooed, moving from his toddler pictures to preschool to Zach at five years old, digging up flower bulbs, dirt smeared across his face and clothes.

  “Yeah, let’s go with adorable.”

  “Did you get into trouble for that?”

  “I would guess I did. Probably from Grandma Sadie. Those gardens were her pride and joy.”

  “I never had a garden,” said Kaitlin, and Zach immediately felt guilty for showing her the album. He’d done it again, parading out his past and his relatives without giving a thought to the contrast with her life.

  “I bet you stayed cleaner than I did,” he said, making a weak attempt at a joke.

  “Once I realized—” She paused, gripping the edge of the album. “Hoo. I’m not going to do that.” She turned another page.

  “Do what?”

  “Nothing.” Her attention was focused on a series of shots of the beach and a picnic.

  “Katie?”

  “Nothing.”

  He gently removed the album from her hands. “I upset you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Liar.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “It was hard, okay.”