The Millionaire's Marriage Demand

by Sandra Field

Julie winced. “Speaking of heart attacks, how are you feeling, Mum?”

  Pearl discussed her cholesterol level, her blood pressure monitor and the new cardiologist she’d seen last week. “Such a sweet man, I should introduce you to him, Julie.”

  Julie didn’t want to meet another doctor. “You’ve had your hair done, it looks nice.”

  “It didn’t turn out at all the color I wanted. I’ll just have to change salons again.”

  “Are there any you haven’t tried?” Thomas said, accepting a glass of wine. “I can’t see what the big fuss is all about.”

  “When you had a full head of hair, you used to fret every time the barber cut it,” Pearl remarked.

  This was a double blow, for Thomas hated being almost bald; and was still fussy about how the remnant was cut. Julie turned away, taking knives and forks out of the drawer. “Would you mind putting these out, Dad? And the candlesticks are on the coffee table… it’s almost dark enough to light them, isn’t it?”

  She was exhausted already, she thought unhappily, taking some rolls out of the bread box and turning on the oven to heat them. Then she bent to find the ingredients for a tossed salad from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Pearl took advantage of her husband’s temporary absence to say, “Your father doesn’t look well, but he refuses to go to the doctor… you just don’t know what I have to put up with.”

  “You’re not backward about telling me, Mum.”

  Pearl gave a theatrical sigh. “Well, you’re my only child, who else can I tell?”

  Do you love your husband? The question hovered on the tip of Julie’s tongue. Exasperated with herself, she bit it back. What was the point of asking? For as long as she could remember, Thomas and Pearl had existed in an outwardly polite state of constant warfare. No overt anger, no attempt to solve their differences; just an incessant sniping at each other that Julie loathed. There were lines of discontent in her mother’s carefully made-up face; her father’s faded hazel eyes held neither hope nor laughter. She said with attempted cheer, “I made a fabulous cheesecake for dessert, you’ll like it.”

  “Too many calories, I’m sure.”

  “You worry them off faster than you put them on,” Julie teased. “Anyway, I used low-fat ingredients.”

  “When you’ve been married as long as I have, you have to keep up your appearance,” Pearl said. “The pasta’s boiling over, Julie.”

  Julie turned the heat down, set the timer and slung chopped tomatoes in the salad bowl. Luckily she had some homemade dressing left. Ten minutes later, they sat down to eat; her parents, as she’d learned long ago, didn’t believe in dining after six-thirty.

  The candles flickered light and shadow on the ceiling, and rain streaked the windowpanes. Pearl said, “I really must make you some curtains, Julie, anyone can look in.”

  “I’m three stories up… besides, I’ll be gone in a couple of months, it’s not worth it.” She smiled at her mother. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “Oh, of course, you’re leaving before winter… the older I get, the more I dread the winters. I miss you so much when you’re overseas, dear.”

  I won’t move back to Portland, I won’t, Julie thought frantically, and felt guilt curdle her stomach. She should be a better daughter: closer to home, more involved. But she’d lived with her parents until she was nearly eighteen, and her presence hadn’t made either of them any happier. In fact, the opposite had been true: their daughter had given them one more thing to argue about.

  The cheesecake caused Thomas to complain that Pearl never made desserts, and Pearl to calculate how many calories he’d just devoured. Julie poured coffee, listening to the rain beat against the windows. What would Travis have thought of her parents? Had he met them, would he have understood why she’d sent him away?

  “You’re spilling the coffee,” Pearl said sharply.

  “Oh… sorry, I’ll get a cloth.”

  “You don't seem yourself,” Thomas said. “Is there anything you’re not telling us?”

  Oh, yes, Julie thought wildly. There’s plenty. Starting with this afternoon, when I just about attacked a man I scarcely know and behaved like a wanton hussy in the bed just down the hall. Wanton hussy was a phrase she’d heard her father use about a woman in a television play. Which, as Pearl had pointed out, he’d watched right to the end. Julie said carefully, “I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

  “I don’t know why you had to take that job all summer,” her mother said. “You could have spent more time with us.”

  “I can use the money,” Julie said mildly. “More coffee, Dad?”

  After dinner Pearl insisted on washing the dishes, they all watched a nature show, and then her parents left. Julie closed the door behind them and wandered back into the living room. Maybe she should have let Travis stay for dinner, she thought wretchedly. Wouldn’t that have been the easiest way to show him why she was so dead-set against commitment? She’d once suggested to her mother that if Pearl was so unhappy, maybe she should get a divorce; affronted, Pearl had lectured her about the sanctity of marriage vows, the tribulations of a woman’s lot and the lifelong duties of motherhood. Julie had never mentioned divorce again.

  Restlessly she roamed the apartment. She couldn’t go for a walk, it was still pouring rain. She couldn’t vacuum the apartment, it was already clean. And she couldn’t sleep on the couch, the cushions were too thin. She forced herself to walk into her bedroom, get undressed and get into bed. But when she turned her head to the pillow, she caught, elusively, the clean male scent of Travis’s body. Her fists clenched, Julie fought back tears that if they once started might never stop. She’d made the right choice, the only possible choice, by sending Travis away.

  Hold that thought, Julie.

  Closing her eyes, she started counting parakeets, which she’d long ago decided was a more colorful way of getting to sleep than counting sheep.

  But it was a long time before her strategy worked.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The evenings home alone in her apartment were the worst. By Tuesday evening, Julie had it figured out: subconsciously, and despite the fact that she was the one who’d sent Travis packing, she was expecting him to get in touch with her.

  Her mother phoned. So did Kathy, one of the nurses from the clinic, and her hairdresser. Travis didn’t phone.

  Why would he? She’d told him, unequivocally, to get lost. But to her horror, she realized she was furious with him for not phoning; for giving up so easily. Compounding her problems, Julie was sleeping very badly. While her mind might be saying she mustn’t see Travis again, her body was giving her a very different message. Her body craved him, unrelentingly.

  On Thursday evening, about nine-thirty, the telephone rang. Her mother, Julie thought glumly. No doubt Pearl was wondering why Julie hadn’t dropped by all week. She picked up the receiver, trying to inject some energy into her voice. “Hello?”

  “It’s Travis.”

  His voice penetrated every pore, filling her with a tumult of helpless desire. She sank down on the nearest chair, clutching the receiver. “I told you to leave me alone,” she said, surprised how forceful she sounded.

  “I don’t always do what I’m told—I thought you knew me well enough by now to realize that. What are your plans for the weekend?”

  “I don’t have any. With you or anyone else.”

  “Who else have you gone to bed with since last Sunday?”

  “Five different men every night. Six on Tuesday.”

  “So you don’t have time to go out for dinner with me Saturday evening?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Your loss,” Travis said cheerfully, and cut the connection.

  Puzzled and vastly disappointed, Julie listened to the hum on the line. He’d given up much too easily; nor had he sounded particularly upset. Nothing like Sunday.

  He was getting over her. Already.

  This thought should have made her happy. Instead, in a vile mood, she ha
uled on her Reeboks, went to the park and ran hard for over thirty minutes. Then she went to her fitness club, worked out and lifted weights. Her body was no doubt in better shape after all this activity. But it had done nothing to improve her mood.

  She didn’t want to be in the same room with Travis ever again. But she didn’t want him getting over her too soon. How illogical was that?

  Travis got in his car and headed for the clinic, glancing at his watch as he pulled out on the street. Perfect timing. He was being both deceitful and manipulative; but it was all in a good cause. At least, he hoped so.

  Julie, as he well knew, had a mind of her own. Maybe she wouldn’t even get in the car. Let alone agree to be driven anywhere by him.

  It was up to him to persuade her. He’d never been one to back down from a challenge. And Julie was certainly a challenge. He shoved to the back of his mind the thought that he might just be banging his head against a brick wall, that Julie would once again give him the cold shoulder.

  That she’d meant it when she’d said she didn’t want to see him again.

  It couldn’t be true. How could he equate that with the woman he’d made love to in her apartment? Her innocence, that told him more clearly than words that her sexual experience had indeed been limited. The bemusement in her face when he’d touched her and she’d been seized by desire. Her generosity, her wholehearted abandonment, her heart-stopping beauty. His hands clenched on the wheel, Travis pulled up at a traffic light. He’d swear on a whole stack of Bibles that he was the first man to bring that woman into existence. So now was he supposed to sit back and allow her to be buried again? All because of her parents?

  Or was he simply being an egotistical idiot who couldn’t accept the word no? Who was acting out of wounded male pride?

  He’d left the stately brick buildings of Old Port for the suburbs. The one word he was trying very hard to keep out of his calculations was that awkward word love. Bryce had asked him if he was in love with Julie, and he’d denied it instantly. This maelstrom of lust, frustration and longing that had him in its coils had nothing to do with love.

  Although how would he know? He wasn’t exactly an expert on the subject. And Julie, he suspected, was even less so.

  He’d handled finding out she had no plans for the weekend rather well. He only hoped that hadn’t changed since last night.

  The grounds of the clinic boasted close-clipped lawns and flowerbeds filled with frilly petunias. Travis drove around to the side entrance, the one nearest the physiotherapy department. By some judicious questioning, he’d found out when Julie’s shift ended; he’d already known, from conversations he’d had with her, that she took the bus to work, renting a car only when she had an expedition in mind.

  He was fifteen minutes early.

  It was a very long fifteen minutes, during which he had time to relive every detail of the time he’d spent with Julie, ending with their cataclysmic lovemaking and her obdurate refusal to see him again. For the tenth time, he looked at his watch. She was now five minutes late.

  The side door swung open. A dark-haired woman in a crisp white uniform was running down the steps.

  Travis got out of the car. Julie saw him instantly and stopped dead on the bottom step. Her face was a study of conflicting emotions; but surely there’d been, elusively, a flash of joy? “Hi, Julie,” Travis said. “I was out this way and wondered if you wanted a drive home?”

  It wasn’t a complete lie. Neither was it the complete truth. “Do you have patients here?” she said suspiciously.

  “I come out here sometimes, yes.” That at least was the truth, he thought. “Hop in, it’ll save you waiting for the bus.”

  She was chewing on her lower lip; if she had felt joy, it wasn’t showing now. “I am tired,” she admitted, slowly walking toward his car.

  She was standing in the sunlight now; the faint shadows under her eyes filled him with a helpless yearning. “All the more reason to get a lift,” Travis said casually as he leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  She got in, closed the door and did up her seat belt. His heart thudding against his ribs, Travis said inanely, “Friday afternoons… what would we do without weekends?”

  “You said it.” She gave him a faint smile. “I thought this job would be a sinecure after some of the overseas stuff I’ve done. But it’s really hard work… although more rewarding than I’d expected.”

  As he drove out of the grounds, he asked her a few technical questions, pleased for more than one reason when she launched into a discussion of some controversial new treatments. By the park, instead of turning right, he turned left; only five minutes later did she say, puzzled, “This isn’t the way downtown. You’re not heading for Old Port… you’re going toward the Veterans’ Bridge.”

  His mouth dry, Travis said calmly, “That’s right. I’m abducting you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s summer, you have no plans and neither do I, and there’s a wonderful resort on a beach a few miles south of here.”

  “You’re taking me away for the weekend?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I won’t go!”

  “Relax, Julie. Live a little.”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do. The next traffic light, I’m out of here.”

  Travis hadn’t rehearsed what he’d do if she reacted this way. “You can do that if you want,” he said. “Although if you really don’t want to go, I’ll drive you home—”

  “Oh sure,” she interrupted, “you think I believe one word you say?”

  “If you’re dead set against changing the smallest thing about yourself, I’ll drive you straight home,” he said in a hard voice. “And that’s a promise.”

  “I did change something! Last Sunday afternoon. I never behave like that, leading a man on, just about hauling him into my bed and then behaving like some kind of sex maniac… I never behave like that. Never!”

  He glanced over. Her voice had had a telltale quiver, and tears were filming her eyes. “I know you don’t,” he said.

  “You believe me?”

  “Of course I do. For Pete’s sake, I was the man you were in bed with. You think I didn’t learn a whole lot about you while we were making love?”

  “You did?”

  “Innocent, trusting, generous, wild… you were all those things. And then you showed me the door faster than you can say bed.”

  She reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. “That’s because you scare the heck out of me.”

  “You think I’m not scared?” he asked; and with an uncomfortable lurch realized it was true.

  She looked full at him. “Come off it, Travis. You, scared?”

  “I’ve never abducted a woman in my life. Never wanted to until you came along. Listen to me for a minute. When I was six, my mother vanished… when I went to bed she was there, and when I woke up in the morning she was gone. I was told she was in New York. But then a few days later, my father told me she’d died. I can’t remember a single detail of the funeral, or if any of the relatives came to stay over. When I tried to ask where she was, my father ordered me never to mention her name again. Then he took me to a boarding school outside Boston and left me there. So I lost the island, too, which was a place as near to heaven as I could imagine.”

  Travis paused. His blue eyes had been very far away; slowly he brought them back to rest on Julie’s face. “Something shut down in me after that, and I suppose you could call it love. I don’t know what I feel for you, Julie. I only know it’s stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before, and that if I turn my back on it, I’m shortchanging myself and possibly you as well.”

  He seemed to have run out of words. But he’d just spent two minutes stopped at a red light and she hadn’t jumped out of the car.

  Julie said blankly, “Well, that was certainly honest.”

  “Don’t ask me why
we’re pulled to each other the way we are because I don’t have the answer,” Travis said roughly. “But it’s got to mean something. This might sound as conceited as all get-out but I’m going to say it anyway—I think it means something for you, too. Don’t run away, Julie. Life’s too short for that.”

  She was gazing down at her clasped hands. “You really were okay with the way I behaved on Sunday?”

  “Okay? I loved it… couldn’t you tell?”

  “I—I guess so.”

  She didn’t sound convinced. He said with all the force of his personality, “You took huge risks, you followed your heart and allowed yourself to be who you really are. That made me feel about ten feet tall—why wouldn’t it?”

  “Passion,” she whispered. “It’s such an overused word and I never knew I was capable of it.”

  “If you spend the weekend with me, neither one of us knows where that’ll lead us. But the alternative is to close down. Bury something that’s both rare and precious. I don’t think we should do that.”

  She swallowed hard. “Working in Tanzania was a piece of cake compared to this.”

  “So was Angola,” he said wryly.

  “I don’t have anything to wear except my uniform.”

  “I bought some stuff for you.” He smiled at her. “In the hopes that you were abductable.”

  “Clothes? For me? How did you know my size?”

  “Photographic memory,” he said solemnly, and watched her blush. “A couple of dresses, a swimsuit, sandals, underwear and a nightgown.”

  Her blush deepened. “A nightgown, hmm?”

  “There’s not much to it.”

  “I’m frightened, Travis,” she muttered.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy this weekend,” Travis said forcefully. As for what happened after the weekend, he was as ignorant of that as she was. And maybe just as frightened. One day at a time, he told himself and accelerated to the maximum speed.

  Half an hour later he’d checked in at the main lodge, and was driving along a narrow dirt road overhung with silver birches toward their chalet. It was the end one, sheltered by thick spruce, with a wide deck facing the beach, where waves danced in the evening sun and rocks gleamed in the wet sand. Julie got out of the car, stretching her legs. “It’s a lovely place,” she said.