Contract Bridegroom

by Sandra Field

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Wonderful—no more morning sickness. Where are you calling from?”

  “Washington.”

  “You can’t replace Starspray in Washington,” she teased.

  “Lindy, I’m getting married.”

  There were several seconds of stunned silence. “You are? Who to?”

  “The Coast Guard operator who took the Mayday signal,” he said. “Love at first sight.”

  “You mean you’ve fallen in love?”

  He felt a flicker of irritation. “Yeah,” he said. “Is that outside the realm of possibility?”

  “Yes, it is,” she said with sisterly frankness, “I never thought you would. Is she nice?”

  “She’s got chestnut hair and a temper, she’s not after my money, and she pilots her own plane.” Plus she has a body to die for. But he wasn’t going to say that to Lindy.

  “Is she pretty?”

  His mouth was suddenly dry. “She’s beautiful,” he said.

  “Different from Marliese?”

  “Night and day.”

  “I never liked Marliese,” Lindy said. “Jethro, that’s wonderful news. When do I get to meet her?”

  “The wedding’s next Saturday, here in Washington—it’s her home.” Rapidly he explained about Ellis’s illness and the need for haste. “But if you could come up here tomorrow, I’ll tell her the two of you are going for lunch.”

  “You’ll tell her?” Lindy repeated ironically. “Same old Jethro. She’ll need a temper, won’t she?”

  For his own reasons, he wanted Celia out of the house on Tuesday at midday. “Sometimes she even listens to me,” he said, and heard his sister’s gurgle of laughter.

  “I’ll be there, and we’ll all come to the wedding. I’m so happy for you, Jethro. We all need someone to love.”

  Not him. He didn’t. He made a noncommittal noise, asked after his niece and nephew, rang off, and went in search of Celia. He finally located her, with the help of one of the maids, eating her breakfast under a cherry tree beside the vegetable garden. She was wearing a brief sundress, her shoulders, arms and knees bare; the sunlight caught in her hair, flickering like electricity. She was reading the paper. She hadn’t seen him.

  He was going to marry this woman. In less than a week.

  He must be out of his mind.

  Suddenly, as though she’d sensed his presence, Celia looked round. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Good morning to you too, my dearest love.”

  “Can it—there’s no one here to hear you.”

  He said with sudden urgency, “Celia, in the local paper the day after the rescue it said I was rich—you must have read it. So why were you so surprised yesterday?”

  Her cheeks reddened with temper. “Why? For the simple reason that I didn’t see it. Isn’t that obvious?”

  “A community as small as Collings Cove and the word didn’t get around?”

  “I came to Washington the day after Starspray sank,” she said in a staccato voice. “By the time I got back, two fishing boats had been lost on the Grand Banks and a colleague was pregnant. There were other things to talk about than you, in other words. Besides, I’m not the slightest bit interested in your money.”

  “You aren’t, are you?” he said slowly, and would have found it quite impossible to categorize the emotions roiling in his chest. “There’s one more condition I want you to put in the contract,” he added curtly. “For the duration of the marriage you won’t have an affair with anyone else.”

  Her peal of laughter scraped his nerves like sandpaper. “Not a worry in the world. Believe me.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask the same of me?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  He tamped down an anger whose source he didn’t want to analyze. “What about the man who calls you sweetheart?”

  “He doesn’t exist,” she said shortly.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked him right in the eye. “Sweetheart happens to be a term I really like. I plan on keeping it for the man I fall in love with. Who isn’t you.”

  His first reaction was relief there was no other man; his second, utter fury that she could dismiss him, Jethro, so cavalierly. Someone needed to teach Celia Scott a lesson. And maybe that somebody was him. “You’re going to the lawyer this morning, aren’t you? See that my interests are protected, and when you’re finished, bring the contract with you. I’ll meet you afterward and we’ll go over it.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  Her laughter had vanished as if it had never been. Jethro sat down across from her and poured himself a coffee. “Where’s the business section?” he said.

  The business section. What else would he want, Celia wondered. The funnies? But as Jethro sat down across from her, his big body was speckled with shadows from the leaves, and the muscles moved in his forearm as he reached for the paper. She wanted to jump him. At nine in the morning, she wanted to throw herself on top of him and kiss him senseless. “Oh…oh sure,” she muttered, and thrust a bundle of papers at him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I—I’ve been trying to work on a guest list,” she stuttered. “I don’t even know where your parents live.”

  “My father’s dead.”

  His face was shuttered. “When did he die?”

  “You don’t need—”

  “Jethro, we’re getting married on Saturday, and I don’t know the first thing about you!” Except that when you kiss me, I fall apart at the seams.

  “My mother left my father when I was seven. After a series of highly publicized affairs, she married a French count who lives in a chateau on the Loire, and I haven’t seen her since. My father died when I was nineteen—that’s when I took over the business. I have one sister, Lindy, five years younger than me. She lives in the Bedford Hills and she’s happily married to a lawyer who has no ambitions beyond a country practice. Two kids and a third on the way.”

  Apart from the sister, there were plenty of gaps in that little recital, thought Celia. It would be interesting to fill them in. “I don’t even know how old you are.”

  “Thirty-seven. And you?”

  “Twenty-seven.” Her sense of humor getting the better of her, she said with a disarming smile, “This whole process is nuts, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one word for it…. I like your dress.”

  Hadn’t she chosen it with him in mind? “I’ll change before I go to the lawyer. Which I’d better do right now so I’ll have lots of time.” After giving him the address and the time of her appointment, she said, “See you later,” and hurried toward the house. She wasn’t retreating so she wouldn’t grab the man and make love to him on the grass, of course she wasn’t. She had to visit her father and change her clothes and make sure all her notes were in order.

  No sex. She’d get the lawyer to put that in capital letters. At the top of every page.

  Celia arrived outside the brick facade of Wilkins, Chesterton and Hawthorne fifteen minutes early. She ran across the street to the elegant mall where she’d bought the suit she was wearing, and found a seat in the little coffee shop. She’d added cream to her cup and was just taking out her notes when a man’s voice said, “Celia! What a pleasant surprise.”

  She stuffed the papers back in her bag. “Darryl…!”

  He kissed her open mouth. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  She pulled her head back, subduing the urge to wipe her lips. “I came back yesterday. To get married,” she said.

  His smile was wiped from his face, leaving his pale gray eyes cold as a winter sky. “Married? Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “Jethro Lathem. Of Lathem Fleets.”

  “You’re having me on! Lathem? He’s a confirmed bachelor.”

  “We met in Newfoundland and we fell in love,” she said limpidly. “Just like in the movies.”

  The overhead lights shone on her cheek. “Looks like he beat you i
nto submission,” Darryl sneered.

  “It was you who tried to do that,” she retorted. The last evening she’d spent with Darryl, he’d hit her, his diamond signet ring grazing her cheek.

  Would she ever forget that disastrous evening? She’d just graduated from the Coast Guard college, a ceremony that had meant more to her than her degree from Harvard. She and her colleagues were going on a beach party, and then Darryl showed up. He was on vacation, he said; he’d kept her address from her last Christmas card.

  She was pleased to see him. Darryl was a familiar face from home; she’d dated him a few times, with her father’s full approval, in her late teens.

  Friendlier to him than was perhaps wise, Celia invited him to the party, where the beer and wine flowed like water. Afterward, Darryl took her back to her apartment. His good night kiss seemed like an extension of the party. But it quickly turned into something more demanding, and her resistance only excited Darryl. He started tearing at her clothes, his hands all over her, his kisses suffocating her; in true panic, she’d wrenched free and screamed, whereupon he’d slapped her hard on the face. Luckily her friend across the hall had also returned from the beach, and had come to her rescue….

  With a start, Celia came back to the present. But something must have shown on her face. “Come on, Celia,” Darryl said, “that was a long time ago, water under the bridge.” He leaned forward confidentially. “You’d be making a big mistake to marry Lathem…he’s had a string of affairs and they aren’t likely to stop. Not with the kind of money he has. He pays the gal off when he’s done with her and goes on to the next one. Is that what you want?”

  Celia pushed her cup away. Jealousy was a disagreeable emotion, piercing as needles and oddly humiliating. Was it true that to Jethro she was just the latest in a succession of women, all of them willing except her? Jethro wasn’t beating her into submission, she thought unhappily. He was kissing her into submission instead. So, in a way, she was just like the rest.

  She’d been silent too long. Darryl said, “Don’t do it, Celia. I’d hate for you to make a mistake like that.”

  “Because you’re on the lookout for a rich wife?” she flashed, and saw his face change.

  “Because I never really fell out of love with you…. I know I blew it after that party, just give me the chance to show you I’ve changed.”

  He was a good-looking man, she thought dispassionately, although there were already marks of dissipation under his eyes and he’d put on weight. “I’m marrying Jethro on Saturday,” she said coldly.

  “What’s the big rush? You pregnant?”

  “Darryl, my father’s dying!”

  “Ahh…Lathem’s chance to add to his holdings—your inheritance won’t be anything to sneeze at. He’s utterly ruthless, of course. Ask any of his business acquaintances. Or his lovers. If you’re going to see your lawyer to try and protect yourself, forget it.”

  Furious that Darryl had guessed her destination, she said, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt, “I love Jethro. And that’s all that matters.”

  He took her by the wrist; she’d forgotten how strong he could be. “Lathem doesn’t know the meaning of the word. You’re making a bad mistake, Celia, I’d suggest you do some hard thinking between now and Saturday. Wilkins is a good lawyer, no question of that. But the sharks Lathem employs could gobble up his firm for a midnight snack and spit it out before breakfast.”

  Celia didn’t want to hear any more. She tried to tug free, feeling his fingers tighten with momentary cruelty before he released her. “Goodbye, Darryl,” she said, and signaled for her bill. She paid and hurried outside, rubbing at her wrist. Darryl was in no way objective, and he’d always had a mean streak. But everything he’d said about Jethro had lodged itself in her brain. Ruthless. Acquisitive. A womanizer.

  She truly didn’t believe Jethro was after her money. No, that wasn’t the problem. And his ruthlessness she’d recognized from the first moment she’d seen him. But how she hated the thought of him in another woman’s arms!

  And how was that for illogical thinking when she was so adamant against finding herself anywhere near Jethro’s arms?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN Celia left the lawyer’s office an hour and a half later, her brain was whirling. Mr. Wilkins was too old and too experienced to show any surprise at the type of contract she’d wanted. But he’d certainly made sure he was protecting her interests as well as Jethro’s, a process that had somehow confirmed all Darryl’s nasty insinuations. So when she emerged on the sidewalk, she had to brace herself as she saw that Jethro was waiting for her.

  He looked devastatingly handsome in a tailored suit, his hair ruffled by the breeze. Although he was clean-shaven, and although the scrape on his jaw was healing over, he still looked like a man it would be dangerous to cross. He said softly, “Every time I see you, you look different.”

  Her chocolate brown designer suit had a straight skirt with a narrow jacket over a tawny silk shirt; gold necklaces looped her throat. It was a sophisticated outfit that she knew she wore well. She said, the words falling from her lips without thought or volition, “If I went to bed with you tonight, would you call off the wedding?”

  He went very still. “No.”

  “But you’d be getting what you wanted. Without marriage.”

  “I said no, Celia. Anyway, what about your father?”

  She let out her breath in a long sigh, her fingers tightening on the stiff envelope of papers she was carrying. “My father. Of course,” she said tonelessly. “This is nothing to do with us and everything to do with him, why do I keep forgetting that?”

  “I’ve booked a table at Lamartine’s. Let’s go.”

  The last thing she wanted was to sit across from Jethro in a restaurant frequented by cronies of her father’s. You can do it, Celia, she thought, all you have to do is act your head off. She tucked her arm in Jethro’s sleeve, pouting at him as they set off down the street. “The best restaurant in town? Honey, I’m flattered.”

  “Let’s add one more codicil to this famous contract,” Jethro grated. “I won’t call you sweetheart if you don’t call me honey.”

  “It’s a done deal.”

  “Good. If you were so rebellious when you were younger, why didn’t you fall into bed with every man who asked you?”

  She said pithily, “You’d make a damned good prosecutor—you specialize in the question from left field, the curve ball no one expects.” Her brow crinkled. “I don’t know why! Too fastidious, maybe? Or else I kept waiting for fireworks that didn’t happen.”

  “We go off like flares when we’re within ten feet of each other,” he said grimly.

  “Is it like that with all your other women?” she blurted.

  “How many woman do you think I’ve had?”

  “You’ve got a reputation as a womanizer.”

  “Gutter press.”

  “So answer the question, Jethro.”

  After a fractional hesitation, he said, “I have never felt with any other woman remotely the way I feel with you.”

  “Oh,” said Celia, her heart unaccountably lighter.

  He was frowning. “So you’re saying you stayed away from men because you were too fussy?”

  “Do you have to make it so obvious you disbelieve me?”

  “You have to admit it’s hard to believe.”

  Celia said, without stopping to think, “I may have been only five when my mother died, but I knew my parents were deeply in love. I guess way back then I must have decided I wouldn’t settle for less.”

  Jethro stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why did you look ready to eat me for breakfast this morning under the cherry tree?”

  “Not much escapes you, does it?” she seethed. “Call it chemistry. Hormones. Lust. Whatever you like. Just don’t call it love.”

  “Love isn’t in the contr
act, Celia. Not for me.”

  “Nor for me! It doesn’t have to be for either one of us.” Upset in a way that made no sense, she saw with huge relief the striped awnings of the restaurant just ahead of them. She said, “I hope you reserved a table by the courtyard.”

  He had. Celia chose a mandarin almond salad and crepes and sipped on the excellent wine Jethro had selected. Then he said, “Let me see this famous contract.”

  She watched as he read it, seeing anew the formidable strength of his jawline, the jut of his cheekbones, the way his hair fell forward across his forehead. Even his ears were sexy, she thought uneasily. She’d never noticed Darryl’s ears. Or Paul’s.

  As the waiter brought their salads, Jethro looked up and said pleasantly to the young man, “Would you mind witnessing our signatures?”

  Jethro signed at the bottom of the page and passed his gold pen to Celia. Her throat suddenly dry, she too signed, then watched the waiter add his name and leave their table. His blue eyes mocking, Jethro passed her back the document. “All yours,” he said. “As am I. Temporarily.”

  “Temporary is what this is about.”

  “As you’re always so quick to remind me.” Jethro drew a small velvet-covered box from his pocket. “Nevertheless, I hope you like this.”

  “I don’t want a ring!”

  His mouth hardened. “Your father will expect it.”

  It always came back to Ellis, she thought in momentary despair. “Then I’ll give it back to you afterward.”

  “Let’s deal with right now first, okay?” Jethro snarled.

  He didn’t look like a man about to become formally engaged. He looked as though he’d like to throttle her. Awkwardly, Celia opened the box, then gave an involuntary gasp of delight. The ring was a solitaire, the stone a rare yellow diamond, almost the hue of amber. “It’s beautiful…as though you knew just what I’d like.”

  He said tersely, “It reminded me of the way sunlight catches in your hair.”

  Her throat closed with emotion. “That’s a beautiful thing to say…thank you, Jethro,” she whispered. The ring was shimmering in the box because her eyes were suddenly full of tears; she wanted to lay her head on the tablecloth and weep. How could a gift that was motivated by falsity feel so right, so perfect?