Wife By Contract

What did he do, copy these romantic phrases from a book? he wondered to himself as he looked them over. The closest thing to a soul mate he could think of for Gregg might be a rabid wolverine.

He frowned, shaking his head. He and Greg had never been close. In some ways, they were the typical Cain and Abel siblings. Whenever Joe said black, Greg claimed white. When Joe wanted peace, Greg turned his radio on high screech. When Greg came home late, like as not, Joe would have locked the door. When Greg spoke, Joe tended to answer him sarcastically, and when Joe laughed, Greg found a way to turn the mood surly.

Now that Joe had been away all these years, he sometimes regretted the way they couldn’t get along. He’d even decided, a few years back, that the rift between them was childish and should be over now that they were men, so he’d come home. But nothing had changed. If anything, Greg had grown moodier and more aloof. The planned-for reconciliation hadn’t panned out.

And now this recluse, this mountain man was figuring to take himself a wife, was he? The situation made no sense at all. And yet it was obvious Chynna was right when she claimed to be here because Greg had...good Lord! Ordered her from a catalog?

His brother, Greg, was preparing to take himself this lovely woman as a wife.

“Over my dead body,” Joe muttered aloud, thinking of Chynna and her wide, hopeful gaze. “It can’t happen. I’d better get her out of here as soon as possible.”

Unfortunately, that was going to be more difficult than it might seem. Unless there had been a radical and unexpected change, the only way out by air would be on the mail plane, and who knew what the schedule was these days. There was probably no other way out except by truck or car, and he couldn’t leave. He had to find Greg.

He might as well resign himself to the fact that she was going to be staying overnight at least.

But then she would have to go. It would be much too dangerous to let her stay.

Two

This wasn’t working out the way she’d planned it.

Chynna picked up the small table and vase, which luckily was made of some sort of sturdy ceramic that didn’t break easily. After a nervous glance at the goldfish bowl on the hutch at the window, which luckily hadn’t been touched, she scolded her children for their behavior, her nervousness making her words a little sharper than they might usually have been. Kim looked up at her warily and popped a thumb in her mouth. Rusty’s lower lip began to quiver. Chynna noted that fact, hesitated, then sighed regretfully and drew him to her.

Her kids were usually so good. She’d been so sure they would charm this man she’d come to marry, make him happy to have them as a family. Instead, things were slipping out of control.

“What is it, Rusty?” she asked, her instincts telling her that something other than the overturned table was bothering him. As she looked down into his earnest face, it seemed to crumple beneath her gaze, and he threw himself against her.

“I bit the man,” Rusty told her, sobbing quietly into her shoulder. “I bit him.”

She frowned, holding him close and trying to understand what it was he was saying. “What man? Greg Camden?” He nodded, his face pressed into the hollow. “You bit him? You mean with teeth?”

Rusty drew back so that she could see him, made a face, then clamped his teeth together with a snap. “Like that,” he said, nodding tearfully. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I d-d-didn’t mean to.”

Chynna recalled the sight of her son racing down the hill and Greg coming behind him and she winced. “Did he do anything to you?” she asked anxiously, studying his dirt-streaked face.

“I was hiding,” he said, gulping back a sob. Huge drops of water stood in his eyes. “I thought he was going to grab me. So I did this.” He snapped his jaws together again, his eyes brightening. Obviously, he was beginning to enjoy the reenactments. “I did it hard,” he said with just a hint of satisfaction. “He yelled.”

“Oh, Rusty,” she cried in horror, pulling him to her chest and rocking him. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“I was protecting myself from a stranger,” he reminded her, echoing lessons she’d taught him, his childlike voice carefully enunciating the grown-up words.

Her son had bitten the man she was planning to marry. She closed her eyes. Had she thought things were slipping out of control? Galloping was more like it. She caught her breath and straightened her shoulders. There had to be a way to salvage the situation, but it had better be done quickly.

“Come on,” she told Rusty, swinging him down to his feet. “Let’s go into the other room. You have to apologize.”

He hung back, dread filling his shining eyes. “Do I have ta?”

“Yes, you have ta. Come on. And make it sincere.”

He slunk along beside her, trying to hide behind her skirt as they made their way into the living room, where the man he’d bitten was waiting.

Joe was still pondering the letter, his blue eyes frowning, but his expression changed as he looked up to see Chynna and Rusty coming toward him. His gaze narrowed appreciatively as he watched her neat form walking briskly through the room. No, it still didn’t make sense. If you really could get something like this from a catalog, the mail would be swamped with orders. How did his brother get so lucky?

She stopped before him, tugging on her son’s arm to pull him out from behind her. “Rusty tells me he bit you,” she said, going right to the point. “He wants to apologize.”

“Oh, yeah.” He’d forgotten about that. He held out his hand and looked at it. The bite marks were still quite distinct, though the skin hadn’t broken. Shrugging, he smiled at the freckle-faced boy. “This is nothing. Baby bites. You want to see where my brother bit me when he was about ten?” He pushed back his sleeve and revealed a long, jagged scar on his bicep. “Now, that’s what I call a bite,” he said rather proudly. “It tore flesh open. The traveling nurse had to be flown in to give me stitches.”

Rusty stared at him with wide eyes, but if Joe had been harboring any thoughts of bringing the boy closer with his old war stories, he realized he wasn’t going to win over the kid this way. Instead of laughing or looking impressed, Rusty looked terrified.

Joe looked into those pained eyes and shrugged. What the hell, he was no good with kids. Never had been. And there was hardly any point in getting close to a boy he was never going to see again after...

Now, that was just the point, he thought as he rolled his sleeve back down. After what? How long was he staying and how close a relationship were they going to be forced into? He glanced into Chynna’s lovely face. It didn’t tell him a thing.

“We need to talk,” he said evenly.

She nodded. “Of course,” she said crisply. “But I need to feed my children. They haven’t had anything since midmorning. I’ll fix something for all of us and put them down for a nap, and then we can go over the ground rules.”

His mouth relaxed into a lopsided grin. Her phrasing struck him as amusing. “The ground rules?” he repeated. “I only want a discussion, not a sparring session.”

She tossed her head back and gave him a cocky smile that didn’t quite warm her eyes. “You may just get both,” she told him as she turned away. “Be prepared.”

He gave her a Boy Scout salute, but she didn’t see it. She was already halfway out of the room, Rusty clinging to her and glancing back as though afraid Joe might be following them.

Watching him, seeing the apprehension in his eyes, Joe winced, thinking of how the boy would deal with Greg. His brother wasn’t known for compassion or tact. In fact, he’d always considered him a sort of goofy recluse, sort of a mountain man with no need for real human companionship. To think of him ordering up a woman came as something of a shock. And knowing his brother, to have the woman show up with two kids in tow would not go over awfully well. She would be lucky to get out of here before Greg got back.

But where was Greg, anyway? Why wasn’t he here to greet his bride-to-be?

Joe turned and gave the room another quick examination. The place was surprisingly clean, though there was clutter here and there. He’d noticed dishes in the sink, but the food hadn’t been on them long. Two long strides brought him to the storage-room closet, and opening it, he discovered that his brother had taken camping gear and cooking equipment. If he’d left that morning, it looked as if he wouldn’t be back for a few days.

Joe swore softly and shook his head. “In the meantime, what am I supposed to do with your girlfriend, you idiot?” he murmured.

But there was no reply that made any sense at all.

He heard Chynna’s steps and turned to meet her as she came through the doorway into the hall.

“We’re almost ready,” she told him, looking cool and efficient. “I’d like to put them down for naps right after they eat. Which bedroom may I use?”

“Bedroom?” She was obviously planning to stay, and he was going to have to decide what he was prepared to do to get her back on a plane to wherever it was she’d said she came from. “Uh...let me take a look.”

There were three bedrooms in the house. The large one his parents had used still held a four-poster double bed. Next to it was what his mother had always called the green room, a place set up specifically for guests, with the best bed and nicest furniture. He assumed the bedroom at the end of the hall, which he’d shared with Greg, was still set up with twin beds.

He looked into the master bedroom and gestured toward the old-fashioned bed. “They could sleep here,” he said.

She looked around him and nodded. “That would be fine,” she said quietly. “Now, where do I sleep?”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Looking down, he met her gaze, and something in the spark he saw in her eyes set him back on his heels. After all, she thought he was Greg. She thought they were more or less engaged. Funny. He’d never been this close to matrimony before. It felt spooky, and he wasn’t real clear on just what she expected of him.

There was only one way to find out. He would have to be blunt. “You’re not thinking about doing any sleeping together or anything like that, are you?” he asked, trying for a light, humorous tone, but ending up glancing at her suspiciously.

She grinned at him, and in that moment, he knew he’d fallen in a trap and he’d been sucker punched. “Of course not,” she said primly. “Not until we’re married.” She turned and led the way down the hall. “How about this room?” she asked, nudging open the door to the middle bedroom. “Who sleeps in here?”

“I guess you will,” he told her grudgingly. “At least for tonight. You might as well bring your things in.”

“Great.” She smiled at him. “I’ll unpack as soon as we finish our meal.”

He wanted to point out that unpacking would be premature, but she made her way back toward the kitchen before he got the chance, and he shook his head instead, angry with himself for not making it clear right away.

“You’re not staying here,” he said aloud, but there was no one there to hear him.

Kids were weird. That was the conclusion Joe came to after sitting down to a meal with two of them. The little girl, Kimmie, as they seemed to call her, had a hard time eating, seeing as how she refused to take her thumb out of her mouth. And Rusty ate quickly, glancing up at Joe as though he were afraid the large man would grab his food right off his plate if he didn’t watch him carefully. Chynna tried hard to get a pleasant conversation going, but it was no use. For that, they needed a certain level of comfort and trust that just wasn’t there.

“The countryside around here certainly is beautiful,” Chynna remarked. “Flying in, you could almost see the curve of the earth. The forests look like they could go on forever.”

Joe grunted, but his attention was diverted by the sight of Rusty’s chipmunk cheeks bulging with food. Was he expecting a long, hard winter? Or just making up for lost time? Hard to tell.

“I imagine you’re snowed in here most of the winter,” she went on. “It doesn’t look like snowplows would get out this way.”

“Uh...no,” he muttered, distracted as Kimmie, thumb firmly in place in her mouth, picked up a pea with her spare hand and calmly smashed it against her nose. He grimaced and looked up at Chynna, wondering where she stood on the playing-with-your-food issue and why she wasn’t doing something to stop the child.

“Should she...?” he began.

He gestured toward the little girl, but Chynna was already cleaning the smashed vegetable off her daughter’s nose with a napkin, making the move as though it were something she did every day, and going right on.

“This is going to be a very different experience for us,” she said serenely. “The children have always lived in the city. And come to think of it,” she added with a quick smile, “so have I.”

“What city was that?” he asked, just making conversation.

“Chicago.”

“Oh. Nice lake.” Not a particularly compelling comment, but he had an excuse. His attention was being distracted by the eating habits of children, things he’d never dreamed he would see at the table.

At this moment, Rusty was returning a mouthful of egg to the plate, looking as though he’d been poisoned. Joe stifled a groan, his appetite completely gone. Chynna deftly whipped away the disgusting plate and handed her son a glass of milk, not mentioning what had happened and cleaning up the evidence as quickly as possible.

“I notice you don’t have a television,” she said, wiping a newly smashed pea from Kimmie’s nose and stopping the hand that reached to get another one.

Joe was just glad one hand was occupied with the thumb in the mouth. If the kid had both hands free, who knew what she might rub into her face. He glanced at her, his eyebrows drawn together in a look of bewildered horror. So this was what it was like to be around children? How wise he’d been to avoid it in the past.

But the woman had been asking him something—whether they had television, wasn’t that it? “Uh...no, no television. No signal makes it out this far very effectively.”

“That’s just as well,” she said. “Television is a major purveyor of exactly what I wanted to get them away from.”

“No kidding.” He threw down his napkin and glanced at the door, wondering if it would be rude to take a walk. A long, extended walk. Maybe go right past these kids’ bedtime.

“We’ve brought along some music tapes the kids like to listen to. You do have a stereo, so they’ll be able to use that.”

“Children’s songs,” he muttered, hoping someone would warn him. He wanted to be out of the house before the chanting songs about beluga whales started up. He’d had a friend with a two-year-old once, and the sappy whale song he heard at their house still haunted his nightmares.

Chynna read the aversion in his face and she bit her lower lip, her dark eyes clouded in thought. This was turning out to be more difficult than she’d expected, but she wasn’t going to let that get her down. She was used to coming up against brick walls and learning to dismantle them. Life had been like that for her so far. Not too many primrose paths in her background. Plenty of thistles and thorns and rivers to cross. When you came from times like that, you got tough or you crumbled. Chynna had no intention at all of crumbling. She was going to end up married to this man. That was a promise.

But for some reason, the kids were not cooperating. She glanced at them with a sigh, and then her gaze lingered and her heart filled with sweet love for them. Poor babies. What did she expect? They’d been wrenched away from the only home they’d ever known, flown across the country for hours, shuttled off in the small plane and plunked down in a gloomy old house in the middle of nowhere. And here was their harried mother, demanding they be on their best behavior. No wonder they seemed ragged and stressed out.

Sleep. That was what they needed.

“There’s no telephone,” Joe said, and she looked up, startled.

No telephone. That was going to bother her, and she knew it. But then, she reminded herself, that was what she’d come out here for. Maybe it was too many modern conveniences that had turned life upside down in the city. She’d wanted the opposite of that, and if giving up the telephone would help her get it, who was she to quibble?

“We’ll get used to it,” she said firmly. There would be no ordering out for pizza. But there would also be no crank calls, no banks calling to sell their credit cards, nobody selling tickets for the policemen’s ball. Life would go on.

“Nap time,” she murmured, untying Kimmie’s bib though she hadn’t really swallowed a thing.

Kimmie stared up, her dark eyes huge as she gazed around her fist at her mother, clinging to that thumb with all her might.

“I’m not sleepy,” Rusty said fretfully, but he rubbed his eyes and yawned, and Chynna knew it was only a matter of time before his eyelids began to droop.

Softly, as she cleaned them up from their meal and began to shepherd them into the bedroom they would be using, she began to sing a lullaby.

“‘Good night, say the teddy bears, it’s time to close our eyes.’” She’d sung it to the two of them at bedtime since they were babies, and by now it worked like magic. They heard the gentle melody and they both relaxed, knowing it was time for a nap, knowing there was nothing that could keep sleep away. That was just the way it was.

Joe watched her with a frown. It was all very well that she was a wizard with her kids, but what did that mean in the long run? Greg and kids—no, the two concepts clashed like...like pickles and ice cream. It wouldn’t work. He had to talk her into going back to Chicago, back to where she’d come from.

Rising, he began carrying dishes to the sink and tried to think of what he would use as his salient point. He was a lawyer, after all. All those years of training in logic and argument were finally going to come to something. No problem. Once he got going, she would be putty in his hands.

He rinsed off the dishes and stacked them, turning when he heard her coming back into the kitchen.

“They’re down for their naps,” she said simply, giving him a quick smile. “We can talk.”

“Nice work,” he said, complimenting her, his head tilted to the side as he looked her over. Nice work, he repeated silently to himself, but this time his comment was related to the state the woman was in herself. She still looked crisp and efficient in her blouse and skirt, but her hair had come undone just enough to leave wisps flying about her face in a very fetching way. She was one attractive woman.

“Shall we sit?” he offered, gesturing toward the chairs at the table.

She nodded and preceded him, glancing up in surprise when he helped her with her chair.

He took his place opposite her and narrowed his gaze, ready to lay down the law as he saw it.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” he began. “You put yourself in a catalog for men who want mail-order brides. Greg answered, selected you and sent you money to come to Alaska. You brought along two kids you hadn’t told him about, hoping he would take them as part of the bargain. But Greg wasn’t here when you arrived. Is that about it?”

She stared at him for a moment, wondering how long he was going to try to keep up this pretense that he wasn’t Greg. She was sure he was going to try to use it as an excuse to get out of their contract. He’d taken one look at the kids and panicked. That had to be it. Now he wanted to get rid of her so he could order himself up another woman, someone who would come unencumbered with little ones.

Well, she understood his angle. She’d been afraid something like this might happen. But she wasn’t going to give up quite that easily. What she needed was time...time for him to get to know the children, time for him to get to know her and what kind of person she was. Once that happened, surely she would be able to talk him into taking them as a set. All she needed was time.

“That’s about it,” she said evenly. Leaning forward on her elbows, she decided to let him have his game without protest at this point. “The only part you left out was how committed I am to making this work out for all of us.”

He gazed into her dark eyes and found only sincerity, but he couldn’t hide his smile of skepticism.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know. This doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.”

She raised one delicately molded eyebrow. “Do I?”

His short laugh said it all. “Sure. Look, Chynna, you’re a beautiful woman. I can’t believe you’ve ever had any problem getting a man.” He turned his hand palm up on the table. “What would a woman like you need to resort to these measures for?”

For the first time, her gaze wavered. “I never claimed I had problems getting men,” she retorted stiffly.

He shrugged as though that proved his case. “Then why did you do it? Why did you make this contract with my brother?”

She hesitated, her eyes cloudy. “I have my reasons,” she said at last. “I’ll explain it all to you at some point. But I’m not quite ready to open up on every private hope and dream I have. Not yet.”

His mouth twisted as he studied her. “Why didn’t you tell Greg about the kids?” he asked.

She wet her upper lip with a quick slip of her tongue. “I knew what your first reaction would be,” she said simply. “I wanted you to get to know them before you turned them down.”

“I’m not Greg,” he said automatically, but he wasn’t really thinking about that. He stared at her. Nothing she said added up. There had to be something else going on here. But what?

“Sorry. ‘Joe,’ isn’t it?” she amended, rolling her eyes only slightly but letting the tone of her voice emphasize the way she felt about this masquerade she thought he was playing.

“‘Joe’ it is,” he stated flatly. “Always has been and always will be. And Greg...” He hesitated, then leaned forward, determined to get this cleared up and out in the open once and for all. “Listen, Greg is my brother. I know him well. And believe me, he’s not husband material in any sense of the word.”

She lifted her chin and met his gaze steadily. She had to admit, she liked what she saw. His face was tan, with grooves where dimples had probably once been, and tiny laugh lines around his eyes. From what she’d seen so far, she would say he was a very nice guy, and one who seemed to see the humor in most things. A man like that should be ready to love children. Why wasn’t it happening?

“Not husband material?” she repeated. “I see. What’s wrong with him?”

He shrugged, feeling uncomfortable to be spilling family secrets. But in this case, he didn’t see any alternative. “It’s not that there is anything wrong with him, per se. It’s just that he’s...” He narrowed his eyes, trying to think of the right words. “He’s a real Alaska guy, you know what I mean? If this were ninety years ago, he’d be digging for gold in the mountains. If this were a hundred and fifty years ago, he’d be living off the land, tromping around in snowshoes and only coming down to civilization once a year for supplies. This is not a man who is set up, either psychologically or emotionally, to take care of a family.”

“Oh?” She narrowed her eyes, too, staring right back at him. “Then why did he pick me? Why did he send me the money to come join him?” She picked up the envelope that was lying on the table between them and pulled out the photograph, dangling it from her fingers. “Why did he send me this picture of himself? And why did he say the things he did?” She shrugged delicately. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do,” she suggested.

He frowned, watching her wave the picture around and feeling like punching his brother in the nose once he found him again. This would have been a lot simpler if Greg had sent a picture of himself instead of using Joe as bait. “I can’t really explain why he did those things,” he said shortly. “Maybe he was playing around with a dream and then got cold feet when it looked as though it might actually come true.”