The Inconvenient Bride

by Anne McAllister

So Sierra nodded. “Sounds…fantastic. I’ll wash up.”

  The table was a sea of small white cardboard boxes when she entered the kitchen a few moments later. Dominic gestured for her to sit, then sat down opposite her.

  Sierra hadn’t eaten all day and she was as hungry as she was exhausted. The first bite was ambrosial and she whimpered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “N-nothing. I…it’s so good. Thank you.” She smiled at him.

  Dominic smiled back. And for a few seconds Sierra felt an even deeper connection than she had all those times that their hormones had been in sync. Then Dominic bent his head over his bowl and began to eat.

  Once her initial hunger was sated, she started to talk. For one night, perhaps, she could keep silent. But it wasn’t her way not to talk during meals. She told him about Ballou. She could write a book of hair-pulling stories about Ballou. And telling them, she made Dominic smile, and then she made him laugh.

  And when they’d finished, she said, “I’d like a cup of coffee. Would you?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”

  They cleaned up the kitchen together while the coffee was brewing. Sierra took hers out to stand and look over the park bathed now in late evening shadows. Across the way she could catch just a glimpse of the tiny white lights that marked the Tavern on the Green. They looked magical. Like fairy lights. Or stars.

  When she’d been a child she’d lain out on the grass in their front yard in Kansas and stared up at night into a sky awash with stars. She’d never been sure which was the first one—the wishing star—so she’d always wished on all of them.

  Most nights she couldn’t see stars here in New York City. There were too many other lights.

  But it didn’t stop her wishing.

  She clutched her coffee cup, held it against her mouth and let the steam rise, blurring her eyes. And she pretended the lights across the park were wishing stars.

  And she said inside her heart, I wish it would work.

  She felt more than heard Dominic come to stand beside her. He didn’t stand close. There had to be a foot separating them in physical space. She didn’t even want to think how much emotional space there was.

  Before their blowup he would have taken the coffee cup out of her hands and turned her in his arms and kissed her. He would have run his hands up under her shirt and rubbed his fingers over her sensitive nipples. And she would have responded in kind.

  She would have made quick work of those buttons and that half-mast tie. She might have teased him with it. She surely would have pleased him with it.

  She stood absolutely still. She even stopped breathing, praying that he wouldn’t try, that he wouldn’t touch. She wanted him as much as she ever had.

  But she wanted more of him than he was ready to give. So she would have to pull back. Say no.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and sipped from his mug. “Good coffee. Thanks.”

  “Thank you…for dinner.”

  They stood still and silent in the darkened room, side by side, not looking at each other.

  Then Dominic said, “Gotta get to work.”

  And Sierra said, “Of course.”

  Lying alone in bed that night, she tried to think positive thoughts.

  He tried not to think about her.

  It didn’t work.

  He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter whether she was in his bed or not, marrying her had accomplished what he’d wanted it to—his father had gone back to Florida and there were no more phone calls about women Dominic ought to consider making his wife.

  Because he had a wife.

  Living down the hall from him.

  It set his teeth on edge. It made him clench his fists and want to pound something or someone. It made him crazy with longing for her.

  But he didn’t push.

  He was afraid to push. Because he was afraid, if he did, she would walk out for good.

  He told himself that didn’t matter either. And he believed it for about twenty-four hours. But that night when he’d come home and she wasn’t there, he’d felt as if all the air had been sucked right out of him.

  He’d stopped to pick up Chinese because he was early for a change. And he figured, since she’d gone back to work that day, that she wouldn’t want to have to fix a meal. He’d expected to arrive home about the same time she did or maybe right after—soon enough that he could tell her not to bother cooking dinner.

  But she hadn’t been there.

  An hour passed and she never came. He’d felt a niggling nervousness, a sort of free-floating worry. Had something happened to her? Had she been run over by a bus?

  Had she left him?

  It wasn’t the first thought that occurred to him.

  But it was the one that sent him bounding up the stairs to check the room she slept in. Memories of the abortive wedding with Carin played in his head. And he’d breathed a sigh of relief to see that everything was still there.

  For now. Maybe she was just out arranging to have her things moved. He’d paced and puttered for another half an hour, wondering if he should go look, telling himself not to be stupid, before he heard the key turn in the lock.

  At the sight of her, weary and exhausted and lugging that damned tackle box, he felt a whoosh of relief like nothing he’d ever felt before.

  Later, though, he’d been annoyed with himself. It wasn’t like he couldn’t have survived without her, for goodness’ sake.

  Still, as the days wore on, he was glad she was there.

  It surprised him, really, how now that he wasn’t going to bed with her, he found other things about her to admire.

  He knew from experience how devoted she was to her sister. But now he saw how devoted she was to her friends. There was, of course, the astonishing gift of his money she’d made to her friend, Pammie. That had been in a good cause, of course. But she was often busy doing something small but significant for someone else.

  She took a psychedelic stuffed duck to work one day for Gib and Chloe Walker’s little son, Brendan.

  “Is it his birthday?” Dominic asked.

  Sierra shook her head. “Brendan likes ducks. And I saw this one yesterday and I couldn’t resist.”

  She brought home a sack of fresh fortune cookies one day and handed them to him.

  “What are these for?” Dominic looked at them mystified.

  “You like them,” Sierra said. “You’re always eating mine.”

  Which was true. He did like them. But he’d never had anyone notice before. “Well, er, thanks,” he said. And because she was standing there expectantly watching him, he plucked one out, cracked it open and popped it into his mouth.

  “And your fortune is?” she prompted.

  “It isn’t the fortunes I like,” he said, his mouth full.

  “Even so,” she insisted.

  He unfolded the tiny white paper. “‘Don’t look back.’”

  Sierra laughed, delighted. “Sounds like my kind of fortune.”

  That was something else he liked about her. She didn’t look back and brood. She looked forward and around her, and did what she could to enjoy life—and see that others did, too.

  Later that week at breakfast—she was eating breakfast with him now, too—she told him she was going to be late that night, that she wouldn’t be home for dinner.

  “Got a hot date?” Dominic asked before he could stop himself.

  She blinked, surprised, then shook her head. “I told Mariah I’d baby-sit so she and Rhys could go out to dinner. They really need a night out for themselves.”

  “Oh. Right.” He felt foolish. He’d never thought about how demanding it must be to have twins.

  He tried not to think about it—and while he was at work he did fairly well. There was always more than enough to keep him busy at work—as long it was interesting enough to keep Sierra off his brain.

  It would be good for her to be gone tonight, he to
ld himself when he came home. He’d done just fine without her for a lot of years. It wasn’t as if he needed her there.

  But he wondered if maybe she needed him.

  So he called his brother’s and asked Sierra if she’d like him to bring over dinner.

  “You have time?” she sounded surprised.

  “I have to eat,” he said gruffly. “I might as well do it with you.”

  “Well, when you put it so nicely, I don’t see how I can refuse,” she said. But she wasn’t really sarcastic. Her gently teasing tone just made him ashamed of his surliness.

  He picked up some Burmese food from a place near Rhys’s, and when he got there he found that she had set the picnic table in the back garden of Rhys and Mariah’s brownstone.

  “It’s nice here,” Sierra said. “Like being in the country.”

  After they’d eaten she stretched out in a chaise longue, balancing Lizzie on her thighs and letting the baby hold on to her hands as she bounced up and down, giggling and grinning. Sierra was grinning, too.

  She looked young and happy and very maternal as she played with Lizzie. They rubbed noses and giggled some more. Then Sierra blew kisses against Lizzie’s soft belly and got a full-blown gurgle out of her niece.

  She was very good with children. It made Dominic wonder if she wanted some of her own.

  They’d never talked about children. They’d never talked about much.

  Experimentally he rolled a ball toward Stephen who was sitting on the patio banging a spoon. The little boy batted the spoon at it and the ball rolled partway back.

  “Wow! Look at that. What a swing! He’s going to be a ball player,” Sierra said with a grin.

  Dominic couldn’t help grinning, too. “Of course he is. All Wolfe men play ball.”

  Sierra’s brows lifted. “Even you?”

  “Of course me,” he said, affronted. “I pitched my team to the state semi-finals in high school. I won there, too. A three-hitter,” he added, and was unaccountably pleased when she looked impressed.

  “Did you play in college?”

  He shook his head. “No. No time. I started working for the firm then, plus I was going to school full-time, double major in accounting and communications technology. Baseball was just a game. Dad figured it was time to grow up.”

  “Dad ought to mind his own business,” Sierra muttered.

  Sometimes, traitorously, Dominic had thought that, too. But he’d never ever articulated it. “The firm is important. It was Dad’s sweat and blood. Long hours and a hell of a lot of determination. It’s our livelihood. And I needed to learn it from the ground up.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Sierra said. “I just think it’s too bad you didn’t get to play ball if you wanted to.”

  “We don’t always get what we want,” Dominic said gruffly.

  “Not always,” Sierra agreed. She gave Lizzie one more bounce. “You have to decide if it’s worth fighting for.”

  Her words stayed with him. They echoed in his head all that evening and for days afterward.

  It would help, he thought, if he knew what the hell he wanted.

  He’d thought he did—the business, freedom from parental harassment, and a wife who knew her place, which was in his bed.

  But the longer he spent with Sierra, the less he was sure.

  In spite of his resolve not to get involved, he spent time with her. The fact was, he liked spending time with her out of bed as well as in.

  He liked coming home and eating with her, some nights even cooking with her.

  He liked baby-sitting with her at Rhys’s and Mariah’s.

  After they’d eaten, he could have gone back to their apartment. Instead he hung around.

  Of course, there was a Yankee game on television and he had started watching it while she heated bottles and got the twins ready for bed.

  Then she appeared next to the chair where he was sitting, handed him Stephen and a bottle and said, “Feed him.”

  “What? Me?” Dominic felt something vaguely akin to panic and tried to hand the baby back.

  But Sierra shook her head. “He needs a little male bonding,” she told him. “Besides, I’ve only got two arms, and I’m going to be feeding Lizzie. Relax. You’re his uncle. He loves you.”

  Did he? Was being an uncle all it took? Dominic considered that as he considered the child in his arms.

  He wasn’t much of an expert on love. He wasn’t really sure he believed in it.

  Once upon a time he’d thought he did. Before Carin.

  After Carin he’d given anything remotely resembling it a wide berth. As devastated as he’d been at Carin’s defection, he couldn’t imagine leaving himself open to caring again.

  But it was hard not to care about a helpless child.

  He rubbed a knuckle against Stephen’s soft cheek, then glanced up self-consciously, and felt even more so when he saw Sierra watching him.

  She smiled at him. It was a warm smile. Gentle. Intimate. The same soft, satisfied look she had after he’d made love to her. As if they were sharing something special. Just the two of them.

  Dominic tried to harden his heart against it. He didn’t want this. He didn’t!

  So what the hell was he doing here?

  He didn’t have an answer to that.

  She’d thought she was in love with Dominic before.

  It was nothing compared to her love for him now. Every day that she spent with him—even when he was ostensibly trying to avoid her—she found more things about him to admire, to cherish, to love.

  And, of course, she still wanted to go to bed with him.

  She didn’t dare.

  Because the more she saw, the more she wanted. She wasn’t settling for being a wife in bed only. She wanted the whole enchilada.

  It was funny how things had changed.

  Her first impression of him had been that he was rich, arrogant and, because he worked on the fifty-third floor, looked down on the rest of the world. She’d been determined to bring him down a peg. He’d been surprised, then intrigued, by her attitude toward him.

  “Do most people bow and scrape?” she’d asked him once.

  “The men touch their forelocks, the women curtsy,” he’d replied, never cracking a smile.

  She hadn’t thought he was kidding at first. Then she’d realized he was playing to her prejudices, having her on.

  The metaphorical gloves came off. They sparred with each other first verbally, then, in Kansas after the wedding, sexually.

  The battle lines were drawn.

  Sierra had met her match.

  She loved that. She loved his determination, his fierceness, his dedication to his work. She loved his dry sense of humor, his sharp wit. She loved his way with Stephen and Lizzie, tentative, gentle and unquestionably loving.

  She loved him.

  She hated that he didn’t want to love her, that he thought her only value was in his bed.

  She was determined he would learn otherwise. And she actually thought he might be.

  He’d come with her to baby-sit, hadn’t he?

  And though he often came home late and disappeared to work in his study in the evening, some nights he brought home dinner so she wouldn’t have to cook. And always he helped clean up after.

  “My mother said boys should do their share,” he told her.

  “Three cheers for your mother,” Sierra replied. “I wish I’d known her.”

  He told her about his mother and father, about what life had been like for the three Wolfe brothers growing up on Long Island as boys. As the oldest, Dominic had always been the leader, the responsible one, the one most like his father, and destined to follow in Douglas’s footsteps from the moment he was born.

  His mother had provided some necessary balance. But after her death, his father had held sway. And what was good for the business, had been good for Dominic.

  But he never complained. He thrived on it just as his father had.

  It made her try
to explain her need to keep working to him. He still didn’t see the need for her to do it, but he actually seemed to listen when she tried to explain.

  “I like making people look good. I like making them feel good about themselves. I like pleasing them. And I like working with hair. It’s alive. Responsive.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t contradict her.

  “I like the people I work with, too. Even the bitchy cranky ones like Ballou.”

  “Pardon my skepticism,” he said dryly.

  “Well, I like almost everyone,” Sierra qualified with a grin.

  And she saw Finn and Izzy, Gib and Chloe, and the others she worked with as often as she ever did.

  But she didn’t see Pam and Frankie much. She called and talked to them on the phone a couple of times a week, and Frankie always asked when she was coming down to watch Star Trek with them.

  And finally, because she missed them, she said, “Tomorrow. I’ll come tomorrow night.”

  She told Dominic the next morning that she was going to visit Pam and Frankie and watch Star Trek.

  “Why don’t you invite them to watch it here?”

  She must have gaped, because he scowled and shrugged dismissively. “It won’t bother me. I’ll just be in my office working. Besides, I bet Frankie would rather watch on a big screen.”

  Frankie was thrilled. He was practically bouncing off the walls when they arrived. He looked brighter than he had in some time. He’d been through all the tests, Pam told her while Frankie, wide-eyed, looked around.

  Everything was great, Pam said. Except she wasn’t a good match to donate a kidney and neither was her sister. “So we just have to wait until the right match comes along.”

  “It will,” Sierra said confidently.

  “I hope so.” Pam lifted her gaze to the heavens. “I’m counting on it.”

  “C’mere, Mom,” Frankie urged. “Look out here. It’s just like you’re in my tree house. This is so cool,” he said over and over till Pam shushed him.

  “You’ll bother Sierra’s husband. He’s working upstairs,” she admonished.

  He was. He’d disappeared straight after dinner. “I’ll get out of your way,” he’d said. She’d been going to invite him to stay, but given his eagerness to be gone, she didn’t say a word.