The Millionaire's Marriage Demand

by Sandra Field

“Proud. Stiff-necked. I’ve been called both,” she admitted. “No doubt you’ve inherited some of my less admirable characteristics as well as my best.”

  “Just ask Julie,” he responded with a wry grin. Then he sobered. “I’m going to be in Portland for at least three more weeks. Will you stay here that long?”

  “I’ll stay as long as you want me to,” Leonora said.

  “I’m glad,” Travis replied, and watched tears tremble on her lashes. Rare tears, he’d be willing to bet, and without even thinking about it crossed the carpet and hugged her.

  She felt slight in his arms. Very briefly she rested her forehead on his shoulder. Then she moved back. “I never stopped loving you, Travis. You’re always welcome to come and see me. You and Julie.”

  “I don’t even know where to look for her!”

  “She won’t vanish off the face of the earth. She’ll come back, you’ll see.”

  It was these words Travis was holding in his mind as he drove back to the condo, where he had one more phone call to make. Julie would come back, Leonora was right. Julie was that kind of woman. But she might well come back intent on being a single mother for the rest of her days.

  On Saturday afternoon, Travis was standing on the wharf where he’d first seen Julie. As he’d turned the last corner in the road and seen the tall wood pylons, he realized he’d been cherishing the hope that by some miracle he’d find her here again.

  The wharf was empty. The launch was about thirty feet out, Oliver at the wheel, Charles standing on the deck. As Manatuck bumped against the dock, Travis looped the hawsers around one of the metal rungs. “Oliver,” he said, “do you mind sitting in my car for a few minutes? This won’t take long.”

  “No sweat,” said Oliver, winked at him, and ambled up the hill.

  Travis jumped aboard. Charles said curtly, “This had better be important, Travis. We have guests at Castlereigh.”

  Automatically bracing himself on the slight swell, Travis said, “I’ve seen Leonora. Twice.”

  A gull screamed into the wind. Waves slapped at the wharf. Very much on his dignity, Charles said, “She signed a legal document swearing she’d never come back.”

  “You told me she’d died. Then you exiled me from Manatuck.”

  “It was for your own good. She abandoned you. And the twins. Heartlessly.”

  “She acted without thought. She was young and probably foolish. But I don’t think she was ever heartless. It was you who was heartless, Dad, lying to your own son about his mother’s death.”

  “I acted for the best.”

  In a flash of insight, Travis said, “Leonora abandoned you. That was the issue, wasn’t it?”

  “Nonsense!”

  “That’s why you pretended there’d been a funeral in Philadelphia. To save face. Don’t bother arguing, I know I’m right. I just never figured it out until now.”

  Charles’s face was a study in conflicting emotions. Then he burst out, “I adored her from the first moment I saw her. She was everything I wasn’t— creative, passionate and free. And so beautiful, black hair to her waist, her eyes like the shoals off Manatuck. I knew I had to have her. Possess her. She was mine, and only mine.”

  Unconsciously he was standing taller against the rail, his pale blue eyes very far away. Travis said shrewdly, “But she wouldn’t allow you to own her. Because you’re right, something about her will always be free.”

  And wasn’t Julie the same? he realized with another of those jolts of insight. Pushing this thought aside, he waited for his father’s reply. “Dancing, it was always her dancing,” Charles rasped. “Once you were born, she was fanatic about getting back into shape, and insisted on taking lessons in Boston. I let her, I thought it was best. But I should have refused.”

  “If you had, she’d have run away sooner.”

  “We had terrible arguments, and somewhere in the middle of all that, she fell out of love with me.” Charles’s laugh was bitter. “But I still loved her. I couldn’t help myself. We’d stopped sleeping together months before the twins were conceived… that happened one moonlit night on the island, when I came across her dancing on the grass, her bare feet wet with dew.”

  Remembering, his father’s face was lit with wonder;

  Travis stayed silent, feeling an unexpected tug of sympathy. The words dragged from him, Charles said, “I thought that having the twins would keep her home. But it did the opposite, made her desperate to escape. So she flew to Paris one night when I was away on business, and I found her letter when I got back.”

  As the sun disappeared behind a cloud, Charles went on, “I was out of my mind. Literally. Yes, my pride was in ruins. All my friends would laugh at me, my business associates, my enemies. But worse than that, I still adored her. I couldn’t let her go because I’d never really possessed her. So I buried her. Pretended she’d died. Threatened her with financial and artistic ruin if she ever reappeared. Then I divorced her secretly, and two years later met Corinne. Who’s Leonora’s opposite in every respect.”

  “Do you still love Leonora?” Travis asked gently.

  Charles finally met his son’s gaze. “I don’t know. I suppose not, it’s all a very long time ago.” With difficulty, he added, “I shouldn’t have done what I did, Travis. I knew it was wrong even while I was doing it. But I couldn’t stop—I was the one possessed. And you paid the price… if it’s any help, I’ve felt guilty for years.”

  Travis hadn’t quite finished. “You always pushed me away. Me and Jenessa.”

  “Isn’t it obvious why? Look at yourself in the mirror! You’re the male counterpart of your mother, hair color, blue eyes, cheekbones… every time I looked at you, I saw her. As for Jenessa, she’s an artist, creative and driven, just as her mother was. So I did my best to crush that in her.”

  It made perfect sense. Travis ran his fingers through his wind-disordered hair. “I didn’t steal the ring.”

  “Brent confessed to that just last week, when I told him under no circumstances was I cutting you out of my will. He’d buried it under the apple tree by the gazebo. It’s at the goldsmith’s being cleaned. I should have known you wouldn’t have done that, Travis, I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Travis said, feeling something longheld loosen in his chest. “I’m glad Brent came clean.”

  “I spoiled him for years. I shouldn’t have.”

  A chastened Charles was something new, and again Travis felt a flash of fellow feeling. He said flatly, “I was to have married Julie on Sunday. She’s pregnant with my child. But she’s run away and I don’t know where she’s gone.”

  He had his father’s full attention. Charles said wryly, “History repeating itself. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Travis. Swallow your pride, tell her you love her and let her be who she is.”

  Charles, unlike Leonora, wasn’t chary of handing out advice. With a faint smile Travis said, “If I find her, I will.”

  Charles clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck, son.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Travis said, investing the words with more than their ordinary meaning. “I’ll need all the luck I can get.”

  “Come and visit us. Anytime,” Charles said gruffly.

  “I’ll do that.”

  As Charles signaled to Oliver, Travis tramped up the slope. He needed more than luck. He needed Julie. He said goodbye to Oliver, got in his car, pulled a U-turn and drove away. This time he was heading for the airport to meet Bryce, who was flying in from Australia.

  Charles, like Leonora, seemed to take it for granted that he loved Julie. But if this was love, Travis didn’t recommend it. It hurt too much.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Twenty-four hours later, Travis was aimlessly throwing flat pieces of slate into the waves at Bryce’s cottage, trying to see how many times he could make them skip into the air. While it was a warm day, the sun glinting on the water, he felt as blue and unsettled as the swell. He should never have given in to Bryce’s insistence that the
y spend the day at the cottage; it was too full of memories of Julie. He’d said something to. that effect, but Bryce hadn’t listened.

  Footsteps padded down the sand toward him. “Brought you a beer,” Bryce said. “By the look of you, you need it.”

  Travis wiped his sandy palms down his shorts. “Thanks.”

  “When are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  At the airport, Travis had given Bryce only the barest of outlines: Julie had run away, and the wedding was off. Since then, he’d talked about everything under the sun but Julie. “Did you bring me here in the hopes I’d spill the beans?”

  “You got it.”

  “You never did fight fair.”

  “No fun in that,” Bryce grinned. The wind tugged at his thick, sun-streaked blond hair. He was Travis’s height, toughly built, his gray eyes as restless as a winter sky.

  “Let’s go sit on the porch,” Travis said abruptly.

  “I’ve got some nachos and salsa, I’ll bring them out. If all else fails, we can always get drunk.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  As Bryce put the bowl of chips on the porch table, he said reflectively, “I’ve been thinking. You know what? You’re well rid of this Julie. She’s led you around by the nose ever since you met her. You don’t need that.”

  “She’s pregnant,” Travis exploded.

  “You didn’t tell me that.” Bryce’s gray eyes skewered Travis to the chair. “You sure the kid’s yours?”

  “Dammit, of course I am!”

  “No of course about it. Could be anyone’s.”

  “You don’t know Julie.”

  “Not sure I want to,” Bryce said. “So do you want this kid?”

  “It’s mine,” Travis said, and heard an uncanny echo of his father’s words.

  “It’s yours and hers,” Bryce replied with unarguable logic. “You figure she’s after your money? You’re not exactly a pauper.”

  “She’d hardly be running away if that were true.”

  “Women can be devious,” Bryce said, shooting a sideways glance at his friend.

  “There’s not a devious bone in Julie’s body.”

  “Good body?”

  “Back off, Bryce.”

  Bryce took a handful of nachos. “You’re head over heels in love with this broad.”

  “You’re the third person to tell me that in the last two days and don’t call her a broad,” Travis said tightly. “I wish everyone’d stop analyzing my feelings.”

  “If you don’t love her, why do you look like a whipped dog? Although if you do love her, I don’t know why you’re sitting on my front porch. You should be out searching for her.”

  “She doesn’t want me coming after her,” Travis said in exasperation.

  Bryce drained his beer. “Let’s stop kidding around. If I’ve been pushing you, it’s because I wanted to find out what was going on. Fact one, you love Julie. Fact two, it’s driving you nuts sitting around waiting for her to come back to Portland. Fact three, a good private investigator with connections could find out where she’s gone in no time, and maybe that’d put your mind to rest. Fact four, I came several thousand miles to be best man at your wedding, and I still plan to do that. But to have a wedding, we need a bride.”

  “Let’s stick with fact three,” Travis said in an ugly voice. “You think I haven’t thought fifty times of hiring someone to find out where she is and then of turning up on her doorstep? But don’t you see? If she doesn’t come back to me of her own free will, what’s the use? The days when I could hogtie her and drag her to the altar are gone, Bryce. Julie wouldn’t stand there and say I do, I will. She’d say I don’t and I won’t. It’s one of the reasons I love her.” His last three words hung in the air. He buried his head in his hands, his voice muffled. “Why was I the last one to see it? Of course I love her. I fell in love with her weeks ago when she stood up to meet me on the Manatuck dock and I told her she was trespassing.”

  Briefly Bryce rested a hand on his arm. “She’ll come back, buddy. She’s got to.”

  “Or you’ll be the one doing the hog-tying?” Travis said sardonically. “Tomorrow morning I’ll drive down the coast—you’re right, I can’t sit around doing nothing for one more day. The irony is, we’ve got the next three days off, both of us, for a honeymoon.”

  “If you find her tomorrow, you can still use ’em. And now I’m going to get a couple more beers and throw some pork chops on the barbecue.”

  Left alone, Travis stared out at the horizon, that knife-sharp edge where water met air. He was in love with Julie. He wanted her to be his wife, to live with him and bear his child. But most of all, he wanted her to love him back.

  He wished he shared Bryce’s confidence that one day this week there’d be a wedding.

  Julie wasn’t staring at the horizon that Sunday evening. She was staring at the television screen. She had been for the last four hours. Sitcoms, documentaries, and a cooking show. The news and weather were next.

  Her bedroom was very comfortable. So it should be, she thought morosely. She was paying top dollar for the privilege of sprawling on a canopied bed with embroidered linens. If she had to be unhappy, she might as well do it in style.

  She was no nearer knowing what she was going to do than she had been Friday afternoon, when she’d driven all the Way to New Hampshire and found this uppercrust inn. Yesterday, once she’d gotten over morning sickness, she’d shopped all day, buying herself a couple of maternity outfits and falling for two tiny outfits that would be fine for a boy or a girl. Today she’d hiked in the hills, eating a picnic lunch on an outlook over the village and sighting several deer.

  Was unhappiness a measure of love? If so, she was in bad trouble.

  Today was to have been her wedding day. Right now, she’d be in Travis’s arms.

  She got up and paced up and down, her arms folded across her chest in a futile effort to banish the pangs of desire that had been attacking her at all hours of the night or day. Then she took out the miniature pale yellow pyjamas with their teddy bear motif on the collar, gazing at them as though they could give her some answers. By running away, she was saying to her unborn child that one parent was enough.

  Was that true? Or was she robbing the baby of what every child should expect as its birthright? Two loving parents and a stable, happy home.

  Had her parents taken her advice? Was Leonora right when she said Travis and Julie were meant for each other?

  The news had started, beginning with international stories. Julie clambered up on the bed, fluffing up the pillows, watching an item on Tanzania with interest. After a recap of the stock markets, the local news followed. The first segment described a horrific pile-up on the turnpike just north of here. Julie winced away from some of the images; a considerable portion of her work at the clinic dealt with the traumatic aftereffects of car accidents. Then her heart suddenly skipped a beat. The camera had zoomed in on one particular car. A black sportscar, she realized, panic-stricken. To her untutored eye, it looked like a Porsche the same as Travis’s. It was crushed between the guardrail and the wreckage of a camper.

  There was no sign of the driver. Even as she watched, two ambulances left the scene, lights flashing and sirens wailing. It couldn’t be Travis. It couldn’t. Or had he been on his way to find her?

  What if he were dead?

  With a whimper of terror Julie grabbed the phone book from the bedside table. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely turn the pages. She found the number she was looking for, and contacted the hospital. But after a frustrating five minutes of delays, she was informed that the hospital couldn’t give out any names until the next of kin had been notified.

  The police, she thought desperately. Maybe they’d tell her. The receptionist passed her on to someone called Ellison. She said, trying to speak clearly through the icy lump in her throat, “There was a black sports car in the pile-up on the turnpike. All I want to know is if the driver
’s name was Strathem. Travis Strathem. I—I’m his fiancée.”

  “Just a moment, please.” The silence stretched out, each second an agony of time. Then the police officer’s deep baritone said, “I’m not at liberty to reveal the name of the driver. But I can assure you it wasn’t Strathem… are you still there, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” Julie gasped. “Yes, I’m here. Thank you so much.” Then, hurriedly, she replaced the receiver, tears blinding her vision. That horrible tangle of black metal hadn’t been Travis’s car. With a quick prayer for the unknown driver, she flicked off the television and climbed off the bed.

  Her knees were trembling; she felt light-headed and dizzy. She couldn’t have borne it if Travis had died. Not before she’d told him she loved him.

  Because, of course, she did. She loved him with all her heart. Why else had he broken through her defences, bringing her such singing happiness in his bed? Why else had she laughed and played with him, talked and fought with such passion and depth of feeling?

  She loved him. And she was bearing his child, a felicity that brought a blissful smile to her face. She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging her newfound knowledge. She could go back home and marry him. She’d leave first thing in the morning; it was too late to set out now. Quickly she reached for the phone again.

  But when she punched in his number, she got his voice mail, just as she had when she’d left the message that she was running away. She put down the receiver. Later, she thought. I’ll talk to him later.

  But at midnight, by which time her eyes were bleary from watching so much television, Travis still wasn’t home.

  He’d had made no claims to loving her. They’d never discussed any of the basics of marriage, issues like fidelity. Could he be with someone else?

  Every nerve in her body repudiated such a conclusion.

  Travis wasn’t like that. He might be angry and arrogant; but he wasn’t facile or shallow. He wouldn’t go from her bed to someone else’s, she was certain of this. So where was he? On Manatuck with Charles and Corinne?