Contract Bridegroom

by Sandra Field

  The famous Lathem control. Out the attic window because the woman who was his wife had been weeping over a bunch of old papers as though her heart would break. Go slow, Jethro, he thought, feeling his nails dig into his palms. Tell her the truth. Or at least part of it. She deserves it. “You weren’t inept. You were so beautiful you took my breath away,” he said.

  She wrapped her arms around her chest and said jaggedly, “I don’t know any of the moves, I can’t play all the games everyone else seems to play. That’s one more reason I don’t do the society thing, why I’m more at home in Collings Cove than Pennsylvania Avenue. I can look sophisticated, sure, anyone can do that. But when it comes to sex, I’m in kindergarten. Be honest, Jethro—you made love to me because you had to win. You had to show me how silly and immature I was to draw up that contract.” Her laugh was bitter. “No sex. How naive can you get?”

  “I signed the contract, too. So what does that make me?”

  “You’re the only one who can answer that,” she said. She frowned, obviously thinking hard. “I keep saying we made love. We didn’t though, did we? We just had sex.”

  “That’s a man’s line,” Jethro grated. “Not a woman’s.”

  “You said I was unpredictable.”

  “I didn’t know the half of it!”

  “Sex,” she repeated determinedly. “Just sex.”

  Infuriated, he had the feeling she hadn’t heard a word he’d said, that she was working things out to her own satisfaction in a way that had nothing to do with him. He said curtly, “Cut out the word just, will you?”

  To his secret delight, she blushed a vivid pink. “You—you mean you liked it?”

  “For Pete’s sake, Celia—of course I did.” That wild and unexpected mating on the carpet had transfixed him with its intensity, its inevitability and its sheer beauty. Or would terrified be a more accurate word? Either way, it had been enough to make any man allergic to commitment run a mile. And he sure fit that category.

  “Then why—” she began.

  He’d had enough of words. Jethro stepped closer, took Celia in his arms and kissed her with a hunger that was bone-deep. Just as if he’d never made love to her, he thought distantly.

  Never had sex with her. Had sex. How could those two short words possibly encompass how overwhelming their union had been?

  With a jolt to his gut, another possibility occurred to him. “Didn’t you like it?”

  She stared absorbedly at the buttons on his shirt. “I loved it…. Couldn’t you tell?”

  If she was in kindergarten, he was in playschool, he thought caustically. He’d always kept his sex life in control. He liked the women he bedded, but he never went beyond liking. Had never wanted to. Emotions were as remote from his bed as commitment.

  With the disconcerting sense that nothing he’d accomplished in the boardroom over the past few hours had been remotely as important as this one small question, Jethro said, “Enough that you’d like to do it again?”

  He felt the tremble run through her body. “Now, you mean?”

  “I’d much prefer taking off that very sexy black dress to sitting across from it in a restaurant.”

  “Oh,” said Celia. “Really?”

  Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Really,” he said.

  “Could we do it in a bed this time?”

  “Good idea.” He glanced downward. “Oak floors aren’t designed with sex in mind.”

  “Sex,” she repeated. “That’s all this is, Jethro.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t want it otherwise.”

  How the devil could one chestnut-haired woman make him feel so off balance, so riled up? He was getting precisely what he always wanted, sex without involvement; yet he felt like a kid whose favorite toy had just smashed into a thousand pieces. “We should use some protection this time,” he said in a clipped voice.

  Her eyes widened as she remembered how she and Jethro had gotten carried away in the attic. “I forgot all about that—I told you I was in kindergarten.”

  He was a great deal more experienced than she, and he hadn’t thought of it, either; the sight of her weeping onto a red silk shawl had driven caution and common sense from his mind. Yet another of his ironclad rules gone by the board, he thought; how the hell could he have been so criminally careless? “I’ll look after it,” he said, and because there was no way he wanted her guessing his emotions were in such an uproar, he sounded as cold as an iced martini. “I need to have a shower, then let’s go to bed. Afterward, we could order in Thai food.”

  That should put her in her place. Sex sandwiched between a shower and curried prawns.

  Her chin tilted defiantly. “Don’t take too long in the shower.”

  If only her courage and stubbornness, her sense of humor and her pure cussedness weren’t such a challenge. He’d been looking for a new challenge. Well, he’d found one. And he hadn’t had to fly to the Andes to do it. Shrugging out of his shirt, Jethro headed for the shower. He could have asked her to join him. He didn’t. Enough was enough.

  When Jethro walked back into his bedroom, a towel wrapped around his hips, Celia was tucked under the covers of his big bed, reading. As though there was nothing surprising about this, as though his bed were her territory. She was his wife, after all. If anyone belonged in his bed, she did.

  Her nightgown, what he could see of it, looked minimal. God, how he wanted her! But did she need to know that?

  She only had to look at him to realize it, he thought wryly, aware of the instant hardening of his groin. He walked over to the bed and sat down beside her. “What are you reading?”

  “It’s about bush pilots,” she said, her eyes skidding from his bare chest back to the book. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do next. After…” her voice wavered momentarily. “Dad would hate me doing it, he’d think it was too dangerous.”

  “After we’re divorced, you mean,” Jethro said tersely. Bush pilots worked up north. A long way from Manhattan. About as far as you could get.

  “How did this get to be so complicated?” she cried.

  “Because our divorce hinges on your father’s death and you love your father—that’s how. One reason, anyway.”

  She was staring at the Twin Otter on the book’s cover as though she’d never seen an aircraft before. “It’s the only reason,” she said stonily.

  Nothing to do with him, in other words. “We’re in an intolerable situation because of your father, don’t think I’m not aware of that,” he said tautly. “Both of us should have indulged in some hard thinking before we embarked on this absurd contract. Myself as much as you.”

  “You regret marrying me.”

  And how was he supposed to answer that? When the valley between her breasts was a deep shadow he longed to plunder, when her shoulders were silken curves and her parted lips a blatant invitation? His control was slipping again, he thought grimly. Along with the towel. “We are married, regret it or not,” he said. “Put the book down, Celia.”

  Before she could argue, he leaned forward and kissed her hard, his tongue thrusting to taste all the sweetness of her mouth, his hand seeking out the warm swell of her breast, where the nipple hardened instantly to his touch. Her book slid to the floor with a small thud. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back with a fervor that inflamed all his senses; this time she knew what to expect, he realized dimly, and was welcoming him with all the impetuous passion and generosity of her nature.

  Celia. His wife. In his bed.

  But it was only sex. They both knew that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CELIA gave herself one last glance in the mirror. She was wearing the midnight-blue taffeta gown she’d found on Fifth Avenue; she looked, even to her own eyes, quite startlingly sophisticated. She also looked like a woman in a way she never had before.

  The party to celebrate her marriage to Jethro was about to begin. Her marriage. The blusher on her cheeks became quite unnecessary as she remembered the two da
ys last week that she’d spent in Manhattan with Jethro. Mostly in bed.

  His body delighted her; in his wide bed they’d come together in lust, playfulness, laughter and tenderness. Twice she’d wept, overwhelmed by an intimacy beyond her experience or wildest fantasies.

  And what about last night, when he’d come home from Singapore? He’d scarcely entered the door of their suite before he’d started shucking off his clothes. He’d picked her up and carried her to bed, fiercely impatient, as ardent and generous a lover as she could possibly have desired.

  If he’d been ardent, she’d more than matched him.

  She scowled at herself in the mirror. Their partnership was about sex. Earth-shattering sex, for sure. But still just sex. To make love you had to be in love. Or else the words were meaningless.

  As meaningless as her marriage.

  She was on a carousel, she thought unhappily, going round and round and never getting anywhere. Then she jumped like a startled kitten as a tap came on her door. “Come in,” she called.

  Ellis walked in. “Fix my tie, Celia,” he said. “Your mother always did it for me—she looked lovely in blue, too.”

  Yesterday morning, she and Ellis had talked about Marian for the better part of two hours, each minute as precious to Celia as a jewel. And now she was struck again with how well her father looked; even better than he had earlier in the week. “You look great, Dad…. I can’t get over it.”

  “Feeling a lot better,” he said bluffly. “You never know, I might have this licked. The new medication’s done wonders.”

  She hugged him hard, her voice breaking. “Oh, I do hope so…. It would make me so happy! I feel like we’re just starting to get to know each other—I can’t bear to lose you.”

  “Your marriage, too—that’s got something to do with it. I couldn’t have wished for a better husband for you than Jethro.”

  The turmoil of emotions this sentiment roused was becoming all too familiar to Celia. Of course she wanted her father on his way to recovery. With all her heart she prayed for it. Yet the inevitable corollary was that her marriage would be extended. Indefinitely. For how could she upset Ellis with a divorce only months after the marriage? She couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly jeopardize his health and well-being for her own selfish ends.

  Jethro didn’t want to be married to her indefinitely. He loved going to bed with her, she’d stake her life on that. But he didn’t love her. His emotions were untouched by her; his control rigidly in place.

  That silly phrase no sex had become obsolete upstairs in the attic; and most certainly in the loft in Manhattan and last night in her bed. But another phrase was very much in place. No love. If Ellis recovered, Jethro would be stuck with a loveless marriage he hadn’t bargained for and couldn’t possibly want.

  The same was true for her, of course.

  What was the word Jethro had used? Intolerable.

  “There,” she said, “your tie’s perfect. And I’m glad you’re happy for me, Dad. I’ll be down in a minute, I haven’t decided on my jewelry yet.”

  “Save a dance for me,” Ellis said, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Not to the racket those electric guitars are making, though.”

  “It’s old-fashioned rock and roll, Dad,” she chuckled, and watched him leave the room. He looked almost sprightly, and how could she be at one and the same time so extraordinarily happy and so utterly miserable?

  She was rummaging in her jewel case, trying to decide if she preferred gold rather than silver with her dress, when Jethro opened her door; they were sharing her suite of rooms. He looked impossibly handsome in his tuxedo; her heart lurched in her breast. With as much poise as she could muster, she said, “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever gone to bed with, Jethro Lathem.”

  “Keep it that way,” he said, his jaw a hard line, his eyes seeming to burn through her sleek gown to the body beneath. Her skin tingled; unconsciously she swayed toward him. “We haven’t got time, Celia,” he added, and pulled a flat box out of the pocket of his tux. “This is for you. A belated wedding present.”

  Her poise abandoned her; all the complicated feelings which Jethro roused simply by existing rushed back to torment her. “Please don’t, Jethro! You and I both know this marriage is a sham. Let’s at least be honest with each other.”

  “You can’t wait to be rid of me, can you?” he said in an ugly voice.

  “The same’s true for you. Admit it.”

  “Your father’s getting better.”

  Her brown eyes flared mutinously. “Then we’ll just have to wait until he’s strong enough to handle our divorce. Won’t we?”

  “Remind me next time someone shoves a contract under my nose to read the fine print,” Jethro snarled. “In the meantime, your father, I’m sure, expects me to give you a wedding gift. So take it, will you?”

  He’d only chosen the gift to please her father. Reluctantly Celia took the box, opening the lid. Against the white satin lining lay a wisp of gold chain set with two diamonds and a sapphire. It was very beautiful. “I don’t understand how you can choose exactly what I like when you hate me for what I’ve done to you,” she said unsteadily.

  “So you like it?”

  There was a note in his voice that made her look up. “It’s exquisite, Jethro…thank you.”

  As though the words were torn from him, he said, “It reminded me of you—delicacy, strength and beauty.”

  “You sure know how to get to me,” she mumbled.

  “We’ve got that much in common.” He lifted the chain from the box. “Hold still.”

  Obediently she bent her head. His fingers brushed her nape, his breath wafting across her cheek; despite—or perhaps because of—their impassioned mating last night, she’d willingly have made love with him right now and too bad about all the guests who were waiting for them to appear. “There,” Jethro said, “that’s got it.”

  He stepped back. The chain was so light it seemed to drift across her skin; the stones sparkled and glimmered. It was only a gift, she thought frantically. A gift of expedience. No reason to cry and every reason not to. “We’d better go…Dad will be wondering where we are.”

  Jethro put an arm around her waist, his smile ferocious. “We’re madly in love, remember? All the society columnists are down there along with a good mix of your friends and mine—so act your head off, my darling wife.”

  The words came from nowhere, laced with desperation. “Sex—the way we are in bed—that’s not an act, is it, Jethro?”

  “If you don’t know the answer to that, I’m sure as hell not going to tell you.”

  He was pushing her toward the door. She’d hurt him. She knew she had. “I’m sorry,” she faltered, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  He looked anything but an adoring husband. She said coldly, “Both of us have got to act, Jethro,” and swept out of the room ahead of him.

  The ballrooms were at the back of the house on the ground floor; a circular staircase led to the reception area, which was decorated with tall standards of lilies. French crystal chandeliers sparkled and shone; the tall windows, hung with royal blue silk, overlooked a floodlit marble fountain in the boxwood garden.

  At the top of the stairs, Jethro tucked her arm in his, smiled down at her with what she would have sworn was genuine tenderness, and murmured, “Madly in love…let’s take them by storm, darling Celia.”

  His hand lay warm over hers; he was caressing her fingers, and his eyes wandered her face with possessive intimacy. It’s an act, she thought breathlessly. Only an act.

  I love him.

  Rocked to her foundations, Celia clutched Jethro’s sleeve. I’ve fallen in love with my husband, she thought, and knew the words for the simple truth. I’m in love. In love with Jethro. Her eyes widened with wonderment, joy blossoming in her heart as she gave him a brilliant, incautious smile.

  The orchestra struck up the wedding march. The gathering of stylishly attired gues
ts at the bottom of the stairs applauded and Celia’s smile widened to include them. She began the descent, her hips swaying gracefully in her elegant gown.

  In a savage whisper, Jethro said, “You’d be wasted as a bush pilot—Broadway’s crying out for your talents.”

  His words sliced through a joy as fragile as it was new. He thought she was acting; he didn’t recognize real emotion when it was right in front of his nose. A real emotion he certainly didn’t share. Later, Celia thought feverishly. Later I’ll worry about what this all means. But for now I have to behave like Jethro’s loving wife.

  I don’t have to act.

  Her father was waiting at the base of the stairs. She kissed him and said, “You get the second dance, Dad. The first one belongs to Jethro…doesn’t it, darling?”

  His fingers tightened cruelly on hers. But no one could have faulted the way he was looking at her, with a mixture of passion and adoration that made her tremble to the roots of her being. He led her out on the dance floor, pulling her against his hips, his cheek resting on her hair. Desire flooded her; she surrendered to it in a way new to her, for it was a desire impelled by love.

  She wanted this dance to last forever.

  It didn’t, of course. A few minutes later Celia had to relinquish Jethro’s arm to take her father’s. She danced with Ellis, her brother and Lindy’s husband; with Jethro again, with her lawyer, her father’s accountant, and then with Dave. She liked Dave. There was something about his steady gray eyes that inspired trust. He said, leading her expertly through a foxtrot, “Jethro looks head over heels in love for a guy I figured was immune to commitment.”

  Celia blurted, “What was his father like, Dave?”

  “The less said about him the better.”

  “That’s certainly the way Jethro handles it,” she replied, an edge to her voice.

  Briefly Dave lost the rhythm. “Clyde Lathem was a boor when he was sober and as dangerous as a roomful of explosives in a burning house when he wasn’t. Jethro took on the responsibility for Lindy when he was far too young, and he had to stand up against a man who wasn’t above using his fists when all else failed.”