“Whatever you fancy. I like to unwind with a good cognac from time to time but an Irish whiskey cream on ice works, too.”
“I’ll go with the Irish whiskey cream on ice.”
She watched him as he moved to the small bar off to one side of the covered patio. All his movements were inherently masculine yet graceful at the same time. Her insides clenched on an unexpected wave of need. No matter how sternly she spoke to herself, it seemed her body had a completely different agenda.
Staring at the sea was infinitely safer than staring at her husband, so she turned her gaze back to the water. The clink of ice against the side of a glass heralded his return.
“Tell me more about you,” Galen said as he handed her a drink, then pulled a chair up close to hers and sat.
All she had to do was point her toes and she’d be touching him, she realized as she accepted the glass. It would take a minimum of effort to run her foot up his calf, then higher still. She curled her bare toes tight against the warm tiled floor of the patio before she could act on her imagination.
“What do you want to know?” she hedged before taking a sip of her drink.
“Where did you grow up?”
This could be tricky and potentially lead her into a discussion she wasn’t ready to have. “Oh, California for a bit, then Oregon.”
“I grew up in California, too, not far from Santa Barbara. You?”
“Oh, nowhere near there,” she lied. “Is everyone in your family expected to work for the Horvath Corporation?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Not necessarily, but we all benefit from the company’s successes, so it makes sense to contribute to them, too. Some of my cousins work in other fields, though, like Dani. She’s a vet in Ojai. But you were supposed to be telling me about yourself.”
Peyton had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry, I have a habit of taking charge of conversations. Occupational hazard.”
She’d gone too far, too quickly, and hastened to lighten the mood before he closed up on her completely.
“You have a big family. Have you all always been close? I can’t imagine what that’s like. Part of me envies you. The other part shrinks in horror at the thought of having to share everything with everyone and not having privacy.”
Galen laughed. She liked the sound and wanted to make him laugh more. “Well, the only thing, or person, we ever had to share was Nagy, and our grandfather, too, when he was alive. We all lived fairly close to one another, so it was normal for us to cross each other’s paths at school or be on the same sports teams. Every Sunday Nagy had an open invitation for everyone to come and visit and eat with her. Still does. It’s always slightly chaotic, but it’s good to be together when we can attend—to be around the people you know will always have your back, no matter what.”
“That must be nice,” Peyton said with a touch of envy.
It was one thing to grow up with privilege like Galen had, but another to have that close sense of family, too. Her father had alienated his own family in the early years of his marriage to her mom, who had in turn been disowned for marrying him. Once her mom was gone there had only been the two of them. Her father’s bitterness about the circumstances of his life had made him a hard man to live with. Happiness didn’t come easily to him even now. Peyton had always hoped that she’d get glimpses of the man he’d used to be before he was let go from Horvath Corporation. The one who’d played with her before dinner and tucked her into bed at night. But after her mother’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, he’d changed. He’d become intense and driven and distant—and he’d never shaken those traits off since. His bitterness had become such an intrinsic part of him she’d almost forgotten the lighthearted man he’d been so long ago.
“Deep in thought?” Galen prompted her.
“Yeah, not good ones, either. My upbringing was very different from yours. My mom became ill when I was still in elementary school. It changed things at home. Then when we moved to Oregon she got worse.”
“I’m sorry.”
His simple words, genuinely spoken, struck at her heart. He was a good man. Empathetic without being intrusive.
“It was all a long time ago. I coped.”
“So what made you want to be a journalist?”
She laughed. “I used to drive my parents nuts by always wanting to know the why of everything. That need to know and expose everything at its root has never left me.”
“That would explain your interrogation style,” he teased.
“Hey, I apologized for that.”
“No problem. It’s good for people to be passionate about what they do.”
Passionate. She could so easily be passionate about him. He was a good listener, all too easy on the eye, and he made her want to do things with him she hadn’t done in a long time. Her relationships with men were usually short-lived. She didn’t give a lot of herself. Physically, sure, no problem, but she wasn’t into emotions. And yet, with Galen, she’d already begun to run the gamut of them. She’d expected this to be a very personal assignment and she’d taken strength from the fact that she’d never had trouble keeping her mind on the job before. But there was something about Galen that all too easily distracted her.
She swirled the melting ice in her drink then lifted the glass to her lips to finish it off. “Well, I’m feeling tired. I think it’s time to call it a night.”
“Yeah, me too. Thanks for helping me unwind. I appreciate it.”
“It was a tough day?”
“Yeah, but tomorrow’s all about you guys. We’d better get some sleep so we can make the most of it.”
“Good idea. What were you thinking for tomorrow?”
“Not sure. Maybe we can let Ellie plan the day.”
“She’d like that.”
They both stood and Peyton took their empty glasses to the kitchen.
“Leave it,” he said, following her. “We do have staff.”
“I know, but I’ll never get used to people picking up after me. It was drilled into me from an early age to take responsibility for myself. It stuck.”
She rinsed the glasses and put them in the dishwasher.
“Good night,” she said as she straightened from the dishwasher and started to leave the kitchen.
“Yeah, see you in the morning.”
As she passed close by him, she caught the faint scent of his cologne and felt her body react to it. That all-too-familiar tingling in her muscles. The hyperawareness of his proximity. All she had to do was stop in her tracks and turn and face him and she had no doubt he’d do the rest. Instead, she kept walking until she reached her room. Her heart pounded in her chest as she closed the door and leaned against it, trying to understand his effect on her. He was just a man, right?
Peyton pushed away from the door and got ready for bed with the words Yeah, right echoing in the back of her mind.
Five
“Come on, sleepyheads!” Galen knocked on first Ellie’s and then Peyton’s bedroom doors. “We’ve got a gorgeous day. Let’s make the most of it.”
“I’m ready!” Ellie said, bounding out of her room and wrapping her arms around his waist in a big hug.
A lump formed in his throat. This kid, she’d been through so much and her strength never failed to amaze him.
“And what exactly are you ready for, kiddo?” he asked, hugging her back.
“Shopping!”
“You want to go shopping today? Anywhere in particular?”
“Ala Moana,” Ellie piped up excitedly. “Then lunch on the beach at Waikiki.”
“Sounds like a grand plan,” Galen answered with a smile.
He made a mental note to book a chopper to fly them over to Oahu after breakfast. As if Ellie could read his mind, she piped up again.
“What’s for breakfast?” she asked. “Where’s Peyto
n?”
“Leilani is making pancakes. You want to go help? I’ll check on Peyton.”
“Pancakes! My favorite!”
And she was gone, just like that. Some days he envied her energy and wondered how on earth he would keep up with her. Galen turned back to Peyton’s bedroom door and knocked again. When there was no answer, he carefully opened the door. Her bed was empty, the sheets tangled as if she’d had a restless sleep. Her laptop was open on the desk facing the ocean. Maybe she’d been working during the night, he thought as he went into the room and wandered over to the desk. He started as he heard the bathroom door open behind him.
“Galen? What are you doing in here?”
“Sorry to invade your privacy,” he said quickly. “I hope you’re decent?”
“Decent enough,” Peyton said from close by.
Her arm snaked out and she pushed the laptop closed before he could read what was on the screen. Her bare skin was still sprinkled with droplets of water from her shower, he noted. His mouth dried as the urge to lick those tiny droplets from her flooded his mind.
“Ellie’s gone to breakfast. I just wanted to make sure you were up,” he continued, turning to face her.
“As you can see, I am.”
She was wrapped in nothing but a towel. Granted, the towel was huge, but the knowledge that she was naked beneath it made every cell in his body jump to urgent attention.
“I’ll, ah, leave you to get dressed, then. We’ll probably be taking off in forty-five minutes.”
“Taking off?”
“Ellie has prescribed shopping followed by lunch on the beach at Waikiki.”
Peyton shook her head slightly.
“You having second thoughts about today?” he asked.
“No, I just can’t quite get used to the idea that you can island-hop on a whim. Don’t mind me.”
But he did mind her. A gentleman would leave her to dry herself off and get dressed. He did not want to be a gentleman right now.
“Stick with me. You’ll get used to anything,” he teased with a fake salacious twirl of an imaginary mustache.
She smiled but he noticed it didn’t touch her eyes, which had shadows under them. She looked weary. Without thinking, he reached up to cradle her face with one hand.
“You didn’t sleep well?”
“Are you saying I look like a hag?”
He chuckled. “That would be the definition of impossible. But you do look tired. Everything okay?”
Her eyes shuttered for a moment. Then she looked directly back at him. “Everything is fine, really. I had a lot going through my head last night, so, no, I didn’t sleep well. I decided to do some work instead.”
“You’re okay for today, though, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
He wasn’t imagining it. She was saying the right words, but there was no inflection, no meaning or enthusiasm behind them.
“Okay, this time I’m really leaving you to get dressed. I’d better go and make sure Ellie doesn’t hoover up all the pancakes.”
Peyton nodded and turned back to the bathroom. He watched her go. The woman was a puzzle. And his wife. She was so different from what he’d been expecting in a bride. What had Nagy been thinking when she’d approved their match? On the surface they looked good together; he knew that as surely as he knew his nose sat in the center of his face. But what lay beneath the surface? She wasn’t the easiest person to get to know and sometimes he felt as if she didn’t want him to know who she was deep down. If that was the case, why had she married? Surely, marriage, especially an arranged marriage, was built on a foundation of common ground. If you couldn’t find that common ground because one partner was flat-out withholding everything about themselves, then where did you start?
Galen slid his phone from his pocket as he walked from Peyton’s room and called the pilot on standby for the resort to schedule their flight to Oahu. Once that was done, he joined Ellie in the kitchen. He hadn’t been there long before Peyton joined them. She must have applied some kind of concealer because the shadows under her eyes weren’t so obvious now. She stroked Ellie’s hair as she sat down at the table with them.
“Did you leave me any pancakes?” she said, leaning over to bump shoulders with Ellie.
“Of course I did. And bacon, too. Do you like bacon?”
“Everything’s better with bacon,” Peyton said, nodding fiercely.
Galen felt himself smile. Even though they hadn’t known each other long, Ellie and Peyton appeared to have formed a bond already and, he realized, it made him feel less alone on this new journey of parenting a youngster. Quite frankly, this whole parenting thing terrified him. He loved Ellie as if she was his own daughter, had from the moment he’d held her in his arms the week Nick and Sarah had brought her home. He hadn’t expected to feel that bond with someone else’s child. He hadn’t expected to feel that bond with any child, because deep down he’d never expected to have a family of his own.
After seeing Ilya lose his dad and then losing his own father less than a year later to the same congenital heart defect that had also robbed them of their grandfather, Galen had learned firsthand how loving and losing someone could damage a person. Destroy them, too. It had made him fearful of this thing called love and caused him to shield his emotions, to keep things very much on the surface when it came to relationships. He never allowed himself to actually fall in love. But with Ellie it had been different. He’d held that tiny, helpless babe in his arms and known that for her whole life he would be at her service.
He watched Peyton interacting with Ellie as he sipped his coffee and wondered if his love could grow for this woman, too. Attraction certainly had. Even now he felt hyperaware of her and could barely take his eyes from her as she ate her breakfast.
Every movement Peyton made had a purpose; there was nothing about her that was wasteful or flamboyant. Most people he knew talked with their hands to a degree, but Peyton was always physically composed, giving off a sense of calm that he suspected was a front for a much deeper and more complex mind than she had revealed to him yet.
“Earth to Galen!” Ellie’s voice intruded on his thoughts. “You know you’re staring. Mommy always said that’s not polite.”
“And she was right, except when a man stares at his wife,” Galen said, putting down his coffee mug on the tabletop with a click. He was a little embarrassed to have been caught out by the nine-year-old and met Peyton’s gaze across the table. “Isn’t that right, Peyton?”
“I guess so. I never gave it much thought.”
Galen’s phone beeped, distracting him. “Excuse me, ladies, I believe that’s our reminder to be at the helipad in about fifteen minutes. Is that long enough for you both to finish getting ready?”
“I’m already ready,” Ellie declared. “Although I haven’t got any money. It’s going to be hard to shop without money, isn’t it?”
“I’ll take care of that for you,” Galen assured her. “First stop, an ATM. I’ll give you an allowance that you can spend on whatever you want.”
Peyton’s brows drew together and she looked as if she wanted to say something.
“What?” he asked as Ellie got up and left the table to go brush her teeth.
“It’s nothing.”
“Clearly, it’s something. You look as if you disapprove of me giving Ellie an allowance.”
“I just wonder how she’ll ever learn the value of money if you just give it to her.”
“So you think I need to make her work for it? Kind of mean when we’re on honeymoon, don’t you think?”
“Look, it wasn’t my place to say anything but you did ask.”
“I did, and don’t worry. This is an indulgence, but she won’t grow up expecting handouts every five minutes. I never did and I’d like to think my parents set a good enough exam
ple to me that I can continue that with Ellie.”
“I’ve offended you. I apologize.”
Offended him? Yeah, maybe. She sure knew how to push his buttons, but he wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.
“It’s okay. You need to know you can talk to me about anything, Peyton. We’re a couple. We should be able to discuss stuff. As time goes on, we’ll learn to make decisions together. It’s new for us both.”
She pushed her chair back and picked up her plate, knife and fork. “You’re right. I overreacted. I just—”
He waited for her to continue but she shook her head and took her things to the kitchen counter. Galen stood and followed suit.
“You just...?” he prompted.
She shook her head again. “No, it’s nothing. I had a very different upbringing, is all.”
Peyton pushed by him and he was left watching her retreating back, again. It seemed to be a trend. Just when he thought he was making headway with her and carefully peeling back a layer to expose some truth about her, she slammed that layer back down with superglue. That made him want to try even harder to understand what made his new wife tick—and he was nothing if not persistent.
* * *
Peyton watched Ellie skipping just ahead of Galen and her as they meandered along the white sand of Waikiki Beach. The shopping expedition had gone better than she’d expected. Instead of Galen just peeling off bills and giving them to Ellie, he’d made a point of buying her a cute little shoulder bag and a wallet and then given her some cash he’d drawn from an ATM. Then they’d discussed what she wanted to shop for and traipsed around the mall while she compared prices and eventually made a few purchases. He’d been so patient and Peyton found herself admiring his manner with the girl, even going so far as wishing her dad could have been more like him when she was growing up.
But her circumstances had been vastly different and her father had never had the kind of money at his disposal that Galen had.
“I’ve made a reservation at the restaurant up there.” He gestured at a spot up the beach. “I hope you’re both hungry.”
Vengeful Vows (Marriage At First Sight Book 3) Page 4