The Wrong Wife

Arousal still pulsed through him, making the tips of his fingers extraordinarily sensitive. That must have been why her skin felt so good to him, why he couldn’t resist stroking it lightly. He watched her eyes darken in response, and felt a flare of triumph.

She wanted him. He wanted her, too—but he could control his desires. He had to. “Give our agreement a chance, Cassie.” He slid his fingers down to her wrist and toyed with the delicate skin over her pulse point. “Be my bride. Live with me. Let me... take care of you.”

Cassie’s pulse was pounding. She knew Gideon could feel it. She wanted him to feel it, wanted, with a power that held her immobile, for him to go on touching her. Easily, naturally, she gave herself up to the feeling. “You just don’t want to admit you made a mistake,” she said, her voice husky. Cassie saw no contradiction between arguing with him and being aroused by him. “You’re not very flexible, Gideon. You think that because you’re married, however—” Her breath hitched as his fingers slid back up her arm, dragging tingles behind them like the frothy wake of a boat. “However accidental that marriage was, you think you should stay married. Stubborn.”

“Consistent,” he corrected. His fingertips slid up under the sleeve of her shirt. The small invasion felt unbearably intimate, as if he’d found some secret place On her body. “I’m a very consistent man.”

“It’s not logical,” she insisted as his fingers trailed around to the inside of her arm...lightly. Ever so lightly. Her skin broke out in goose bumps. “You don’t want to be married to me.”

His mouth, that beautiful, sensual mouth, tilted up at one corner. “Don’t I?” When his fingertips made a little circle on her arm, his knuckles grazed the side of her breast.

Oh, my. She swallowed so she wouldn’t gasp. Or moan. “You were going to marry the Icicle. I mean Melissa. You got drunk because you couldn’t marry her.”

His fingers stopped moving. His eyes went still with the dark, chill quiet of a frozen pond at night. Deliberately, his eyes fixed on hers, he repeated the motion of a moment before, circling the skin on her arm with his fingertips...circling the side of her breast with his knuckles. “You’re not sure if you can trust me, are you, Cassie?”

“It’s not very... consistent...of you,” she managed to say, “marrying me when you wanted her.”

He abandoned the pretense of rubbing her arm. His knuckles skimmed up the side of her breast. “I don’t want her now.” Slowly his hand went down. again. Up.

Helplessly her eyes closed as the undertow caught her, dragging her along like a shellfish tumbled by the tide across a gravelly ocean bed—a rough place in spite of the lightness of his caress, a place of confusion and sharp, conflicting currents.

Those hard, seemingly casual knuckles traced the curve of her breast, dipping under it, coming close to the nipple on the way up. Half of her breast seemed to catch the heat from his hand and reflect it back at him. The other half was cold, aching, bereft. His touch skimmed under her breast, around, closer to the tip, nearly touching it...nearly...circling...

“Gideon—?”

Her own longing forced her eyes open. He wasn’t looking at her face anymore. He stared openly at her breasts, at the bumps. her nipples made beneath the silk—the nipples he’d made harden, but refused to touch.

She grabbed his wrist. Her breath came hard, as if she’d been running. She didn’t know if she was going to shove his arm away or move his hand where she needed it. “What do you want?” she demanded hoarsely. “I have to know what you want from this marriage.” Sex? she thought wildly. He’d never wanted her before. Maybe his body remembered last night, though, even if his mind didn’t, because he wanted her now. Was sex enough to begin a marriage with? Could she accept it, if that was all he wanted from her?

Could she refuse?

Slowly his gaze left her breasts, sliding up again to her face. But she couldn’t read anything in his eyes, nothing but the settled darkness that spoke of both passion and control, a mixture Cassie couldn’t understand. “One year,” he said. “Give me one year to keep my word to you. Then we’ll end it.”

The pain was sharp enough to send her shooting to the surface. She sucked in air as if she’d actually been underwater, and stepped back. “An annulment would—”

He was shaking his head before she finished getting the word out of her mouth. “No. Not now. Not ever.”

Why? Why would he prefer divorce to—unless, she thought with an awakening flick of temper, he wanted to have her in his bed for that year.

That was it, she realized. The man had decided he wanted her, therefore he would have her. For a year.

She tried to step back. His hands slid to her waist and stopped her.

His eyes were unfathomable as they met hers. His harsh face gave nothing away, but his hands spread out, claiming more of her. His thumb almost brushed the underside of her breast. Heat arrowed through her, reminding her of passion... and frustration. “I’m not going to agree to an annulment,” he said. “Nor to a divorce. Not yet. Will you fight to be free of me, Mermaid?”

His eyes are so dark, she thought. So dark and filled with answers and questions she couldn’t guess, reasons and motives he didn’t want her to see. But for a moment as his fingers stirred her subtly, powerfully, she thought she saw past the control to the man beneath. A man who wanted her. A man who could be hurt.

“I guess,” she said, her voice damnably unsteady, “I’ll give it a try.”

She saw triumph, quickly masked, flare in Gideon’s eyes, and looked away. She wished she knew just how much of a fool she was being. How much had he manipulated her? With his touch, yes—he’d used his skill and her own hunger against her. She acknowledged that. But the other? Had she seen past the surface into the vulnerable man beneath—or had he let her have that glimpse, because on some level he knew that it was the one sure way to get what he wanted from her?

Three

When the door to Cassie’s apartment closed behind her at twelve-thirty that afternoon, she was alone.

Thank God.

She leaned her back against the door and looked at her haven, badly in need of this chance to catch her breath. She’d driven here from the airport, where her car had been parked. Gideon—her husband—had taken a limo to his apartment. A place she’d never seen. The place she was supposed to move into this afternoon. A moving company would be here soon to pack up her things, most of which would go into storage. Gideon had insisted on arranging it.

Exhaling with a whoosh, she sank to the floor, then just sat there, dazed, looking around the room that had been home for the past five years.

Cassie’s one-room apartment took up half of the converted third floor of a narrow old house in a part of Dallas the yuppies and preservationists hadn’t gotten around to saving yet. She’d collected its furnishings from flea markets and the occasional going-out-of-business sale. Because she loved textures, she had both wicker and wooden furniture. Because she loved color, both wicker and wood were painted in stained-glass colors, and the braided rug on the oak floor could have competed with Joseph’s coat of many colors. A huge, handwoven wall hanging on the north wall mixed feathers, yarn, rope, string and shells in shades of cream, turquoise and rusty red. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held books and other important objects. In one corner her banana-colored sheets and turquoise spread dipped to the floor from the sides of her unmade bed.

She looked at that bed. Only yesterday morning she’d been running late and decided not to make it up before leaving for work. Yesterday morning, when she was still single.

Cassie’s room was otherwise clean and tidy. She might thrive on chaos, but order, she firmly believed, had its place, and clean dishes were almost as important as clean paint brushes. Both the tidiness and the mismatched furniture suited her, as did the whole room full of comfortably worn objects—objects that were hers. And movers would come today, pack up everything but her clothes and toiletries, and put it all in storage.

She considered blaming her brother for her predicament. He’d pulled her aside in that hotel room and said that it was time to either fish or cut bait. If she wanted Gideon, she had him—for a year. If she didn’t want him badly enough to risk trying to keep him, she’d better get serious about getting over him.

Cassie looked at the one unabashedly messy area of the room. Between two windows sat her easel with the newly prepared canvas she’d planned to start on this weekend. Finished paintings leaned against the wall and the legs of the big, ugly table that held her painting supplies. Beneath easel and table stretched a paint-spattered drop cloth.

She thought wistfully that it would be lovely not to have to work. To paint all day. If this were a real marriage... But as things were, there was no way she could just live off Gideon. Maybe she could find something part-time...

Feet thudded on the outside stairs that led up to her apartment. Cassie winced. Her moment of privacy was over. The noisy feet paused at the second floor landing, where Cassie’s friend Moses lived. Cassie heard the knock that landed on Mo’s door and the husky female voice that called out, “Come on, Mo! Cassie’s back. Her car is out front.”

With a sigh Cassie pushed to her feet and stepped back from the door. There was no point in protesting the invasion that was about to occur. And they were, after all, her best friends.

The owner of that distinctive female voice hollered, “Come on!” at Mo. In a rushed clatter of feet she arrived at Cassie’s door and threw it open without knocking.

“Cassie!” Jaya Duncan stopped just inside the open door, hands on her skinny hips, her full skirts swishing around her ankles from the force of her arrival. “What the hell did you think you were doing, leaving that ‘won’t be home tonight’ message on my machine last night?”

“Keeping you from worrying?” Cassie offered. Knowing Jaya would be singing at the club at that hour, she’d taken thirty seconds to call from the airport. If her message had been rather sparse on details, well, she’d been in a hurry.

“Hah!” Jaya said. “You robbed me of hours of sleep, wondering what you were up to.”

Since Jaya was, as usual, vibrating with enough energy for two people, Cassie grinned unrepentantly. “You never bother to tell me when you’re going to stay out all night with your passion-of-the-month.”

“That’s different.” Jaya flicked one elegant hand dismissively. “I do that sort of thing. You don’t. Besides, you aren’t even seeing anyone. So where were you?”

Cassie was granted a brief reprieve when another figure, tall and slim and male, appeared behind Jaya. “Cassie,” Mo said, smiling that slow smile of his. “I’m glad to see you got back in one piece, in spite of Jaya’s proclamations of disaster.”

. Cassie smiled back. Her two friends couldn’t have made a greater contrast. Mo was quiet and steady, with gentle eyes, a big nose, and a fair complexion that suited his curly blond hair. Jaya’s exotic looks came from combining a Hindu mother with a Scots-Irish-Mexican father. Her skin was dusky, her dark hair as thick and glossy as a wig, and she was bossy as all get-out. She and Cassie had been friends since the second grade.

In addition, Jaya was thoroughly, enthusiastically heterosexual. Mo wasn’t.

“So where were you?” Mo asked, moving Jaya aside so he could come in.

Cassie sighed. “I was in Vegas, actually,” she said. “I got married.”

“M-m-married?” Jaya looked from Cassie to Mo and back. “Cassie?”

Cassie nodded and held up her left hand, fingers spread to show her ring.

“Oh, my God.”

“Those were Gideon’s words,” Cassie muttered.

“Gideon,” Jaya repeated. “Gideon Wilde. You married him? You actually married Gideon Wilde? Oh, my God.”

“Isn’t he the man you told me about?” Mo asked. Mo’s lover had left him six months ago, about the time Cassie heard about Gideon’s engagement. They’d sat up with a couple of bottles of wine and talked their way into morning. “The one who was engaged to someone else?”

She grimaced. “He isn’t engaged now. She broke off with him a few days ago.”

“Talk about rebound,” Jaya said. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. You actually married him. How? Where? And you didn’t tell me! You didn’t even invite me!”

“You were singing at the club by then,” Cassie said. “And everything happened so fast—”

“Did you drug him? How did you get him to agree?”

“He asked me,” Cassie said, injured. “And I’ll have you know I didn’t say yes right away, either.” It had taken Gideon and Ryan working together almost a whole hour to get her to agree.

It hadn’t taken Gideon on his own that long to get her to set aside her idea of an annulment. Of course, he hadn’t exactly played fair about how he persuaded her.

She really ought to be upset about that.

“So what,” Mo asked gently, “are you doing here, if you’re married?”

“Packing.” Cassie bit her lip. Had she really agreed to leave everything she knew for a man who wanted her in his bed for a year? One year...and her brother had had to talk him up from six months.

She moaned and sank down onto the faded candy stripes of her sofa. “And before you ask—no, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m crazy. I’ve got to be crazy. How did I get myself into this?”

Jaya moved a newspaper folded to the Help Wanted section off the couch, and sat beside her. Mo sat on the other side. “Like usual, I imagine,” Jaya said, putting an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and squeezing. “You jumped in with both feet, damn the torpedoes and all that stuff. Just like you always do. Now, you tell me all about it. Who were you rescuing this time?”

“No one.” Cassie frowned. “Really, Jaya, I’m perfectly capable of minding my own business. I like to help people out sometimes, that’s all.”

“Whatever you say. Just tell me how you wound up marrying the man you’ve carried a torch for all these years. And why you’re so unhappy about it.”

“Not all these years,” Cassie protested. “Not continuously, anyway. I got tired of unrequited love when I turned twenty. Remember Randall?”

“Ha!” Jaya waved away the young man responsible for the loss of Cassie’s virginity with one scarlet-tipped hand. “That chipmunk doesn’t rate as even a minor distraction.”

“Randall was cute and sensitive.”

“Randall was a nerd.”

“Even if you don’t count Randall, I haven’t exactly been pining away. What about Max?” she demanded, referring to her only other serious involvement, with a baseball player she’d dated two years ago.

“Max is an idiot. A gorgeous idiot, sure, and even a pretty nice guy, which just made it harder for you to admit how much he bored you. He doesn’t count.”

“Then there’s Sam, or J.T., or any number of other guys I’ve dated—”

“Cassie,” Mo interrupted, “Jaya knows, and I know, that you date so many men because you think there’s safety in numbers. You like to fix the men you go out with—fix them up with a friend of yours or with a new job or just with a listening ear and good advice. You don’t go to bed with them, and you certainly don’t run off to Vegas with them. This Wilde is different.”

“That’s right,” Jaya agreed. “The fact is, you’ve never seriously tried to get Gideon Wilde out of your system. You’ve just played around at it. Now quit changing the subject, and tell us how you wound up married to him.”

So Cassie told them, leaving out a few of the really personal details, like her wedding night and what she’d told Gideon had happened. Or hadn’t happened. She wound up talking mostly about the ceremony itself—conducted in the Weddings-To-Go Chapel of Love.

“The three of us were on our way back from the license place,” she told them. “It’s open until midnight during the week and around the clock on weekends. Anyway, our cab passed this RV with a neon bride on the side, and Gideon flagged it down.”

Jaya laughed, and Cassie told her about the minister’s rhinestone-studded tuxedo, which had far outshone Cassie’s jeans and silk blouse. Mo, she noticed, didn’t say much. Finally, with a sigh, Cassie stood. “I’ve really got to get some things in a suitcase before the movers get here.”

“What do you mean ‘before the movers get here’?” Jaya went over to the tiny breakfast bar and lifted the lid of the pig-shaped cookie jar by one ear. The jar emitted a loud oink as she took out a couple of sandwich cookies.

“She said she was here to pack, Jaya.” Mo’s frown announced his opinion of her plans.

“But I thought—surely you’re not going to stay married, are you?” Jaya looked astounded. “I mean, running off to Vegas is a great adventure, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Moving in with the man—” Jaya stopped suddenly and pointed a cookie at Cassie. “Gideon does know you’re moving in, doesn’t he? You’re not planning to just surprise him?”

Mo laughed.

“Good grief! You do think I’m an idiot, don’t you? He knows. He gave me his key.” She ducked into her walk-in closet and heaved things around until she unearthed her suitcase. It was a huge relic her mother had found at some garage sale years ago. She dropped it on the bed and flicked the catches. “It’s his idea, actually. I wanted to get an annulment, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“An annulment?” Mo asked.

“Well, it might affect his business.” Cassie grimaced when she heard how lame that sounded. She pulled an armload of jeans from her dresser and carried them to the suitcase that lay flat and open, like a gaping maw, on her bed. “A lot of people knew about his engagement to Melissa, and how she ended things between them. He’s going to look foolish enough as it is, running off and marrying someone else on what was supposed to be the day he and the Icicle tied the knot. He’d look even dumber if we split as soon as we got back to Dallas.”

Both her friends just stared at her. She dumped the jeans in the suitcase, which swallowed them with room to spare, and tried to make what she was doing sound more reasonable. “A business reputation can be fragile. Some investors might lose confidence in Gideon over this.” The looks on their faces told her she wasn’t improving. Cassie gave up and went back to the dresser, opened her lingerie drawer, and pulled out a pile of colorful cotton, silk and nylon. The nightgown on top, a bright red wisp of silk, slithered to the floor. She bent to pick it up.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Jaya slid in front of the dresser, slammed the drawer shut and barred Cassie from it with her body. “You are not going to pack until you start making sense, you hear? Even you wouldn’t agree to move in with a man just to help him keep his reputation solid in business. And why did you say annulled instead of divorced?”

“It doesn’t matter, since we aren’t getting either one. At least, not right away.” She tossed the nightgown over her shoulder. Since Jaya was standing in front of the dresser and Mo blocked the closet, and since Cassie didn’t want to tell her friends about Gideon’s one-year trial plan, she turned and headed for the bathroom.

The phone rang. “Get that, will you?” she called, and opened the battered metal tackle box that held her makeup. She could fit in her toothbrush and toothpaste, but not much else. “Damn,” she muttered. She still had to pack her shampoo and conditioner and eye drops and hair spray and first aid cream and curling iron and blow drier and...she put her hand on her stomach. It felt jumpy and unhappy.

“If you’re this nervous,” Mo said from the doorway, “maybe you should rethink what you’re doing.”

“There ’s so much to the business part of marriage,” she said. She’d never before considered the amount of paperwork involved in getting married. “I’ll have to cancel my utilities, change the name on my credit cards and with Social Security.”

He nodded, crossing his arms on his chest and leaning against the door frame. “Then there’s the post office. You’ll need to leave a change of address there, cancel the newspaper and change your magazine subscriptions.”

Cassie bit her lip. She hadn’t even moved in with Gideon, and already she felt as if her life were being swallowed up in his. “It makes sense to move into his place, though,” she told Mo—or maybe herself. “It’s bound to be a lot bigger than mine.”

“Bound to,” he said agreeably.

“It’s probably all black-and-white, though,” she muttered. She did remember Gideon’s fondness for those two noncolors from her one visit to another apartment of his eight years ago. She sighed and turned, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The cherry red nightgown was still draped over her shoulder. Thoughtfully she pulled the bit of silk provocation down and looked at it.

This was one thing, she understood suddenly, that she wouldn’t need. Not yet. She had to keep some part of herself separate while they both adjusted to this marriage. Maybe, she thought with the optimism that was part of her, it wouldn’t have to be for long. Maybe she’d be able to get under his guard, get him to let down his walls quickly once she was actually living with him.

Yes. she needed time. She was desperately vulnerable to him. She needed him to be a bit vulnerable, too, before they made love again.

Or for the first time, as far as he was concerned.

“Hey, Cassie,” Jaya called from the other room. “This guy on the phone wants to know if you want to buy some supplemental accident insurance.”

“Too late,” she called back, flicking the nightgown up over the shower curtain rod. “Fate can’t possibly have another accident in store for me.” Not after yesterday’s head-on collision.

“It’s not too late,” Mo corrected her. “You don’t have to do this, Cassie, if it isn’t what you want.”

She met his eyes and said softly, “Maybe it was too late years ago.”

He held her gaze steadily for a long moment. “Okay,” he said at last, laying his hand on her shoulder. “No more questions, no more pressure. But you know where to come if you need anything, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled. She smiled and nodded.

“Oh, no,” Jaya said as she joined them. “Are you two getting sentimental on me?”

“Cover your eyes,” Mo said equably. “We’re almost finished.” He gave Cassie’s shoulder a last squeeze. “Since you’re determined to do this, I’ll go get that overnight case you always borrow when you visit your mom. You can load some of this stuff in it.” He turned and left.

“You could help me pack, too,” Cassie pointed out to the friend who remained, and started pulling things out of the medicine cabinet. She paused, holding up an odd-looking pile of glued-together seashells that usually sat on the vanity. It somewhat resembled an angel with chunky, gold-tipped wings.

Jaya folded her arms in front of her flat chest. “Help you screw up? I don’t think so.” She noticed what Cassie held and snorted. “I still can’t believe you bought that thing. Artists are supposed to have some sort of standards.”

“Art,” Cassie said loftily, turning the little statue over to inspect it from a different angle, “is about genuine feeling. This is as genuine a piece of cheap tourist kitsch as any I’ve seen.” And the old woman who made and sold the statues had delighted Cassie.

Jaya might have been reading her mind. “That old woman knew a pigeon when she found one.”

“She did, didn’t she?” Cassie smiled, remembering the mixture of shrewdness and humor in eyes cradled in several decades’ worth of wrinkles. But amusement drained out as she considered the present. Wistfully she said, “I can’t quite see this in any place Gideon owns, can you?”

“Cassie.” Jaya’s narrow face was earnest and worried. “Think about what you’re doing, here. Running off and marrying Gideon Wilde is one thing—an impulse, maybe a mistake, but nothing you can’t fix. Moving in with a man who doesn’t want your stuff cluttering up his place is something else entirely.”

Cassie had to smile at Jaya’s unique slant on what was important. “Living together tends to follow marriage. And... I did make promises.”