The Husband Contract

And here was today’s addition—a small, battered sound system, tangled wires and a handful of CDs littering the elegant trestle table from the ming dynasty. And on the carved rosewood tester bed, amid the richly embroidered pillows, a giant one-eyed teddy bear winked at Clay as if amused by his grand surroundings.

“She always was a messy one.”

Clay looked over his shoulder, not really surprised to see that Mrs. Hilliard was awake, still roaming the halls after midnight. Since Joshua’s death, the housekeeper had tended the old man’s estate with an almost obsessive care.

“Mrs. Hilliard,” he said, smiling, “we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

She didn’t return his smile—she wasn’t much for grinning at the best of times—but he knew she liked him anyway. Her requirements were straightforward. She liked anyone who had been Joshua Browning’s friend.

Bustling past him into the room, the housekeeper swept the teddy bear off the bed and dropped it on top of the dresses. She flattened her brows into an ominous line. “Melanie never had a bit or respect for anything. Did I ever tell you how I caught her up in the hall here, bowling down ivory netsukes with a glass paperweight? A hundred years old, they were. Priceless.”

Clay chuckled. She’d told him the story at least three times this week.

“Honestly, that girl drove her uncle crazy.”

“I’ll bet she did,” he agreed, thinking of Joshua’s obsession with order and control. Even for a more relaxed personality, Melanie probably wouldn’t be a very soothing roommate—all that hot-blooded temper, all that restless, volatile energy. No, not soothing. But she might, he thought, be rather stimulating….

Whoa, boy. He jerked firmly on the reins of that thought. He mustn’t ever, ever allow himself to think of Melanie Browning that way. She was a client, not a woman. She barely qualified as one anyhow, with her enthusiasm for swordplay, her tomboy temper and her wide, innocent blue eyes that teared up as easily as a baby’s.

But then, like a fool, he thought of how she had looked in her knight’s tunic, all honeyed sunshine, silver sequins and incredible curves. Something deep in his gut tightened and warmed at the mental picture, instinct overruling intellect.

All right, so she was a woman, damn it. She still wasn’t his kind of woman. He’d been in love only once, right out of college, and Allison had been as different from Melanie Browning as ice was from fire. Ally had been the Grace Kelly type—calm, blond, polished and refined until she glowed like marble.

When she had died, only a month before their wedding, Clay had vowed he’d never look at a woman again. Needless to say, such wild, brokenhearted promises couldn’t be kept Now, ten years later, he looked—he even occasionally touched—but he always went for the same type. Blond, cool, collected. Would-be Allisons who would, of course, never be Allison.

But even if Melanie Browning had been Grace Kelly herself, she would have been off-limits to Clay. He could stand here till dawn listing all the ethical violations any fooling around with her would represent.

“And this young man who keeps bringing over her boxes,” Mrs. Hilliard was continuing as she circled the room, sniffing for new transgressions. “This Ted Martin. Who is he anyway? Why is a nice young man like that playing errand boy for her?”

“Ted Martin? I didn’t know about him,” Clay said, curious. “Boyfriend, perhaps?” He suddenly, intensely, hoped he was right If Melanie had a squeaky-clean fiancé at hand, it would solve all Clay’s problems at once. He could satisfy his conscience, turn over the inheritance and banish all pesky thoughts of curvaceous white knights forever.

“Boyfriend?” The housekeeper snorted. “Not hers, not on your life. Melanie’s taste always ran more to drummers and dropouts.”

Clay raised one brow. “She was only sixteen, remember,” he chided gently.

“She was old enough to know better.”

“Still, maybe you should cut her some slack,” he insisted.

He wasn’t going to let Mrs. H. destroy his dream of an easy resolution. A “nice young man” named Ted would be very helpful; an unemployed space cadet called Ringo would not. “Not many sixteen-year-old girls go around dating Nobel Prize winners.”

“Maybe not. But it’s one thing to flirt with one of those longhaired deadbeats when you’re sixteen.” Mrs. Hilliard switched off the light with a small huff. “It’s something else altogether to run off in the middle of the night and marry one.”

Was she doing the right thing?

Melanie had no idea whether she was about to salvage their lives or destroy them. For seven long days, her confidence had been under seige, and she had hardly slept, scarcely eaten. Doubts had raged through her mind like guerilla warriors, popping up whenever she relaxed, attacking whenever she let down her guard.

What if she was wrong? What if this whole move was folly? What if she took Nick back to Cartouche Court and then she couldn’t win her inheritance? Wouldn’t it be harder than ever for him to accept his fate? Or what if Clay had been right—that the problem was Nick, not their address? Would she have put them both through this for nothing? And would allowing Clay to live in close proximity to Nick really help anything?

Familiarity with Nick didn’t always breed respect, at least not these days.

But when Melanie woke up on Saturday morning and loaded the last of their things into her car, she felt oddly excited. For some reason, the doubts this morning were almost inaudible, like a cry heard in the distance. Today she dared to hope.

Perhaps it Just was her nature to be foolishly optimistic. Or perhaps it was the day itself. As they drove, the air was sweet with the promise of summer, and the hills rolled by like mounds of emeralds. It was a magical morning, designed to sow hope in even the most barren heart.

As she turned into the lane that led to Cartouche Court, she caught her breath. But the magic held. Sunshine sparkled along the driveway like a yellow carpet strewn with topaz. Orchard orioles, hidden somewhere behind the pink blossoms of the crab apple tree, filled the air with explosive ripples of song. A pair of comical jays, apparently sent straight from Walt Disney’s central casting, cavorted in the front fountain, which splashed merrily over its marble tiers.

And there, bursting from the double doors as if shot from a bow, was Mrs. Hilliard, her arms outstretched to welcome Nick home. Nick rolled his eyes, but he climbed out of the car and, to Melanie’s amazement, allowed Mrs. Hilliard to hug him. Melanie watched them, the sunlight fracturing the prisms forming as her eyes grew wet without her permission. And finally the doubts were completely silenced. For the first time since their uncle’s death, Nick was smiling, laughing at Mrs. Hilliard’s halfhearted reprimands, stoically enduring the cheek pinching and the kisses.

Melanie suddenly felt like joining the orioles in a song. Oh, yes—she could endure coming back. She could even bear having to bow and scrape and endeavor to please Clay Logan, Executioner. She could stand anything. Nick was happy.

Picking up both overnight bags, she followed her brother through the double doors and into the marble foyer, humming something that, had she been able to carry a tune, might have been the “Ode to Joy”.

The workmen were on the job again today, crouched on the staircase, their hammers rising and falling. They both looked up and, noticing her suitcases, smiled.

“One minute,” the nearer man said in a melodic Jamaican accent He held up a handful of carpet tacks. “Not yet. One minute.”

Dropping the suitcases in the comer, she waved her hand reassuringly. “That’s fine,” she said. “We’re in no hurry. We’ll wait”

Mrs. Hilliard had scurried away, to prepare the fatted calf, no doubt Nick was at the far end of the hall, fiddling with one of the two suits of armor that guarded the library door. Melanie’s stomach tightened instinctively. No one was allowed to touch those.

“Nick,” she called out nervously. “Don’t.”

He flung a disdainful look over his shoulder. “Why not?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled the gauntlet loose and began shoving his hand into it “I always do.”

“You do?” Melanie couldn’t believe it. “Does…I mean, did Uncle Joshua know?”

Nick screwed up his face, expressing his certainty that Melanie was nuts. “Of course he knew,” he said. “We used to fight every night”

Melanie was speechless. She could have said the same, she thought dryly, but her meaning would have been completely different She watched helplessly as Nick pulled the helmets, gauntlets and swords from both suits. He came clanking across the hall and handed a set to her, grinning.

“Here, put these on. It’s fun.”

For a moment, she was frozen. She half expected Joshua to come storming out of the library at any second, his handsome face red with rage beneath his distinguished shock of white hair. Six feet five inches of pure fury, under which the little girl would crumble away to dust…unless she stood up to him, unless she fought back with all the courage she could find, or pretend to find.

Melanie blinked hard. Good grief. Was she going to be reduced to a terrified child every time she entered this house? No. She had always wanted to play with those swords, and by God, she was going to do it now.

The helmet was shockingly heavy and a rather tight fit Once she squeezed it on, she had to struggle to keep her head from tipping over, clunking her chin against her breastbone. The sight was in the wrong spot, so she had to keep shoving the visor up in order to see anything at all. And the gauntlet was cumbersome, the sword unwieldy. God, how had they managed to fight in this stuff? She wouldn’t have been able to move a muscle. She would have been the deadest knight on the battlefield.

Still, it was fun. When Nick came whooping toward her, sword in the air, she found her coordination and met him thrust for thrust. Up and down the hall they battled, the fiercest of enemies. The workmen ceased their work and watched, cheering the cleverest moves, applauding the nastiest insults.

Eventually Nick backed her up against the stairwell. “Say your prayers, you murdering dastard,” he commanded as he slashed his sword above her head. She leaped out of the way, but the jerking motion slammed her visor shut.

“Time-out,” she cried, trying to get the darn thing open again.

Nick snorted his disgust. “Murdering dastards don’t get time-out, Mel,” he complained. “They get their heads lopped off. Now say your prayers.”

She wrenched the visor open just in time. “No, you say yours,” she said, lunging toward her brother with a stumbling gait, the heavy sword almost pulling her off her feet. “If indeed you know any, you heathen cur!”

Nick neatly sidestepped, but to her horror, Melanie kept going, propelled by the weight of the enormous steel blade in her hands. She had barely managed to untangle the sword from her feet before she thudded, shoulder first, against the library door.

“Goddamn it,” Copernicus screamed from within. “Who the hell is it?”

Nick began chortling irrepressibly, and even the workmen seemed to be smothering smiles behind their hammers.

“It’s me,” Melanie called back grumpily, massaging her shoulder, which was probably dislocated or broken or something. It hurt like mad. “And you’d better watch your tone, you moldy old vulture, because I’m armed.”

“And dangerous, it seems.” The library door opened to reveal Clay Logan, looking elegantly amused in his gray suit and tie. He glanced at her sword, then at the library door.

“There wasn’t really any need to storm it, you know. It wasn’t locked.”

She tried to lift her chin, but it wouldn’t go up. The blasted helmet must have been made of lead. The only result of her efforts was that the visor banged shut again.

“I wasn’t trying to get in,” she said, hoping she was facing in his direction. It was like wearing a metal blindfold. “I just lost my balance.”

“You were pretty unbalanced to start with, Mel,” Nick chimed in, still snickering.

Melanie spun around to give her brother a dirty look, but she couldn’t find him. “Darn,” she said, wrestling with the visor and finally getting it up. “I hate this thing.”

“Perhaps you should remove it, then,” Clay said helpfully.

As if that hadn’t already occurred to her! “I’d be glad to assist”

“I can do it,” she said huffily, tucking her sword between her knees to free her hands. But she had forgotten about the clumsy gauntlets. When she tried to lift the armor from her head, her hands merely slid noisily across the metal.

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