Boardroom Bride and Groom

Carolyn Duff didn’t do discomfited. She never felt out of sorts.

“I’m buying toys for one of the children in the charity—” She glanced down at his cart and saw toys. Books.

“Me, too. I think the entire Lawford legal community got onboard with this one,” he said. “But maybe I should have stuck to business law. I haven’t the foggiest idea what the hell I’m doing.” He reached into his cart and pulled out the two dolls. “Burps or cries? Which is better? How am I supposed to know? To me, they’re both losing propositions.”

She laughed and when she did, it resurrected a part of her she’d thought she left behind long ago. A lightness she’d lost in the years she’d lived with her aunt Greta, then rediscovered when she’d met Nick.

A lightness she’d missed in the heavy work of being a city prosecutor.

She glanced at Nick. The poor man clearly had no clue when it came to kids—and neither did she. The two of them were stuck in the same shopping hell. What harm could come from a little talking? “I know exactly how you feel. I was standing in the next aisle with the same problem.” She reached into her cart and pulled out a selection of trucks. “Fire engine or police car? Dump truck or…what is this thing? A front loader? And what is a front loader anyway? And then there’s these things called transformers, but I can’t figure out why anyone would want a toy that transforms, or if it’s even what this boy would want.” Carolyn tossed the toys back into her cart and threw up her hands. She was babbling. She always did that when she got nervous—something that only seemed to happen outside the courtroom, and apparently whenever she got around Nick, who was a six-foot-two reminder of her biggest mistake. “Whatever happened to a bat, a ball and a catcher’s mitt?”

Nick chuckled. “It has gotten complicated, hasn’t it? Every single thing I see here has a computer chip in it, I swear. These aren’t just toys, they’re technological revolutions.” Nick shook his head. “Well, I’ll muddle through somehow. After all, I’ve got a college degree. How hard can it be? Just watch me.” He chuckled, showing the easy humor that had always been as much a part of Nick as his dark-brown hair and his cobalt eyes.

Did he remember that crazy decision to rush off to Vegas? The heady choice they’d made? One where they’d clearly not been thinking with brain cells, and only with the blush of lust?

Carolyn, out of Aunt Greta’s house for the first time since she was nine, so desperate to cast off the strangling structure of her past, saw escape in Nick. She’d married him for all the wrong reasons and had at least been smart enough to undo it the first chance she got.

Nick leaned forward, reading the boxes that lined the shelves, studying the facts and figures, researching his purchase. He was being the detail man that made him a good lawyer, but betraying none of the funny, spontaneous Nick she’d once known. Just as well. She didn’t need that man in her life. Because that man was the one who had—for a snippet of time—made her think she could be someone she really wasn’t.

“This says ages eight and up,” Nick read aloud, sounding as serious as a tax accountant. “I don’t think that will work. My paper says the child is six.”

“My—” She caught herself before she said “my child,” because this wasn’t her child. “The child I’m sponsoring is almost the same age. I have a five-year-old.”

“Someone wasn’t thinking. Giving you and me a couple of little kids like that. They should have assigned us two high school students. That we can handle. Buy them a couple calculators and some dictionaries. Sit them down, dispense some college advice.”

“Yeah.” She let out a little laugh. An uncomfortable silence filled the space between them, the kind that came from two people who used to know each other and now didn’t, who were pretending everything was cool—even when a heat still simmered in the air.

Leave, her mind said. Take this pause as what it was—an excuse to go. But her feet didn’t go anywhere and she couldn’t have said why.

“Maybe you should try this one.” Carolyn picked up a box that held a big white plastic horse designed for a doll to take galloping into the sunset. She flipped over the box, read the same age recommendation as Nick had seen and put it back on the shelf. That was all they needed—a choking lawsuit. “Forget it. Too many small parts.”

He gave her a smile. “When did you get so smart about toys?”

“I didn’t. It’s the lawyer in me reading the fine print.”

“You always were good at that part.”

Carolyn let those words go, knowing Nick meant more than the directions on a box. She’d been the strict one, always playing by the rules, where he’d been the opposite.

“What’s your kid’s name?” Nick asked, strolling further down the aisle, toward the dress-up clothes.

“Name?” Carolyn looked at him.

“Yeah. His or her name.”

“Uh…” Carolyn thought for a second. “Bobby.”

Nick grinned, and when he did, Carolyn was whisked back to those college days. “Nice name. My child is named Angela.”

“Your…your child? You’re married?”

“Are you kidding me? Could you see me with kids?” He chuckled. “You know me, Carolyn. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to have ties.”

That had been part of the attraction and part of the problem. Carolyn had gone for Nick because he’d been the complete opposite of the life she’d left in Boston, but when she’d needed him to be dependable, to listen, to be a true partner—

He hadn’t been there. He’d let her down.

“No, I never married again,” Nick went on. “Angela is the child I’m sponsoring.”

Carolyn released a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Nick wasn’t married. He didn’t have kids. No other woman had laid claim to his heart.

She shouldn’t care. The days when she had any stake in Nick—or in anything about Nick—were long past.

“So, nope, no kids for me. This is as close as I get.” He gestured toward the basket of toys.

“A one-day commitment, huh?”

“Those seem to be the kind I’m good at.” Nick’s gaze met hers, and their shared history unfurled in the tension thickening the air between them.

A mother with two children, one strapped into the shopping cart’s seat, the other trailing behind and whining discontent about some toy she’d been denied, squeezed past them. On the overhead sound system, someone called for a price check in aisle three. Once again, the uncomfortable silence of two people who had essentially become strangers grew between Carolyn and Nick, like a tangle of thorny vines separating once-friendly neighbors.

“Well, it was great seeing you, Nick,” Carolyn said. “Good luck with your shopping.”

Before she could turn away, Nick reached out and laid a hand on top of hers. Carolyn took in a breath, the air searing her lungs, awareness pumping through her veins. Nick’s touch, so familiar, yet also so new after all this time apart, spread warmth through her hand. The scent of his cologne—the same cologne, as if nothing had changed, not a single thing. The sound of his heartbeat, his every breath—could she really hear that, or was it just her own, matching his?—time stopping for one, long slow second. “Wait. Don’t go,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why don’t we shop together?”

The mother and two children disappeared around the corner, the whine of the eldest child dropping off when she apparently spied a better toy. The store’s music droned on with its instrumental rendition of Seventies hits, a soft undertow of lounge melodies. “Shop together?” Carolyn repeated.

He grinned. “Do either of us look like we know what the heck we’re doing?”

She glanced down at her haphazard selection of toys. A complete zoo of stuffed animals. Every type and kind of truck carried by the store. Books that featured cartoon characters, superheroes, animals and dancing vegetables. She’d pretty much bought one of everything, hoping that a scattershot of presents would result in something the child might like.

She’d already spent three hours at this toy shopping and had almost nothing that said “Wow, great gift” to show for her efforts. Every item she picked up, she hemmed and hawed over, wondering if a little boy would like this or would prefer that. The truth was, she had no idea what little boys, or little girls, for that matter, really wanted. She could barely remember her own childhood.

When it came to buying presents for a little boy, who better to ask for an opinion than a male? A male who’d been the kind to enjoy playing Frisbee and catch on the college campus? The kind who clearly knew how to have fun?

She and Nick were both adults. Their marriage—which they’d both agreed back in that diner was a mistake—was far in the past. This was a charity mission. What harm could a few minutes of shopping do?

“This is a one-time offer,” he said. “One of the Lawford attorneys offering to help a prosecutor, pro bono.”

She laughed again, and right there, found herself caught in the old spell all over again. The one that had made her abandon her structured life and go along with Nick’s crazy Vegas plan. But this idea wasn’t crazy; it was merely a partnership. “How very charitable of you.”

“It’s not charity. After all, weren’t we always better together than apart?”

“Maybe in school, in classes, we worked well together, but not as a couple. You know that, Nick,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been happily divorced for three years.”

He arched a brow, cynicism written all over his features, and she wondered if maybe the end of the marriage hadn’t been the relief to him that she’d always told herself it had been. “Happily?”

“Divorce was what we both wanted. We agreed it was a stupid mistake and the best thing was to undo it as fast as possible. Tell no one, forget it ever happened. Pretend we’d never met. Remember?” Carolyn remembered those words, the argument that had accompanied that moment, and most of all, the look of pained disappointment in Nick’s eyes. It had surprised her, because she’d thought Nick hadn’t taken their bolt to the altar seriously at all—hadn’t thought Nick took anything seriously.

“I remember our ending as being more like removing a bandage, quick and a little painful.”

“Well, it’s over now, and we’ve both moved on, right?”

“Of course. And presumably, we’ve matured since then.”

“Have you?” she asked.

He grinned. “Not a bit.”

She chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”

“Ah, but that’s what keeps my life fun. And makes for entertainment in the courtroom.”

She just shook her head. Nick was exactly the same.

Over the years, Carolyn had managed to avoid seeing Nick, as much as was possible in the relatively small Lawford legal community. It helped that they worked in two entirely different areas of law—criminal and corporate.

When they did see each other, they exchanged nothing more than a simple nod, a few words of greeting.

Wearing a suit, he was devastatingly handsome. Powerful. In boxers and barechested, he was—

Irresistible. Sexy.

Luckily, today he was wearing a two-button navy suit with a white shirt and dark-crimson tie. It fit him perfectly, hugging over the broad shoulders and defined chest she knew existed beneath the fine fabrics. As did, apparently, the rest of the female population in the store, women who made little secret of staring at Nick. And why not? Nick Gilbert was the kind of man women noticed.

Carolyn returned to the matter at hand, drawing herself up. “I’ll let you get back to your shopping,” she said. “It was nice to see you again. Good night, Nick.”

She made moves to leave, but Nick took a step closer. “You don’t want to shop together? Are you afraid?”

“Afraid of what?”

“Working together. Don’t tell me the great Bulldog of Lawford isn’t up to the challenge of a little shopping trip with her ex. For a good cause, I might add.”

Her chin went up a notch. “I can certainly shop with you.”

“And not be at all affected by my winning personality.” He grinned. And damn if that smile didn’t whisper a temptation to take a dip in the pool of fun again. Just for a second.

“What winning personality?” She gave him a slight teasing smile back. “I heard you lost your last two cases.”

“Are you keeping track of my career, Miss Duff?”

“Of course not.”

“One might think you are. Otherwise, why would a city prosecutor care what a corporate lawyer is up to?”

Her chin rose a little higher. “Just making sure you’re staying in check, Mr. Gilbert, and not breaking any rules.”

He grinned. “And when have you ever known me to stay in check?”

The memory danced into the forefront of her thoughts. The first time she’d met Nick Gilbert. She’d been leaving the university library, overloaded and overwhelmed, books piled in her arms, preparation for a marathon study session for the upcoming bar exam.

She’d transferred to the Indiana school just a month earlier, and found the transition to be difficult, the adjustment harder than she’d expected. She’d made the best of the change, as she always had of every situation in her life—because she didn’t have a choice.

She’d been financially cut off in Boston and had opted for the only school that had offered her a partial scholarship and a tuition she could afford.

But she’d had difficulty fitting in among the informal Midwesterners who didn’t understand the stiff-upper-lip Bostonian. One month in, and Carolyn had yet to make any friends. As she’d crossed the campus, she’d felt the stares of the other students. Her step had caught on a bump in the sidewalk, the books began to fall—

And then Nick Gilbert came along.

He’d stood out in a sea of brown and navy like a neon sign. He’d rushed over, righted the books and done the most insane thing she could have imagined to set her at ease.

He’d made a quarter disappear.

But in that simple, unexpected magic trick, Nick had won her over and made everything Carolyn had to face seem so much less daunting.

“So, what’ll it be?” Nick asked. “Tough it out on our own in the wilds of the toy department or join forces?”

Carolyn met Nick’s gaze and smiled, caught up in the old magic once again. “All right, I’ll shop with you, but only because you are so clearly hopeless at this.”

“Oh, I see, take pity on the man. Is that it?”

A bubble of laughter escaped her, filling Carolyn with a lightness she hadn’t felt in weeks, months. How she craved that feeling, yet at the same time, felt the urge to flee. “Don’t you need pity, Mr. Burp-or-Cry?”

“Oh, I need more than that, Carolyn.”

The way he said her name, with that husky, all-male tone, the kind that spoke of dark nights, tangled sheets, hot memories, sent a thrill running through Carolyn, sparked images she’d thought she’d forgotten. But, oh no, she hadn’t forgotten at all. She’d merely pushed those pictures to the side, her mind waiting—waiting for a moment like this to bring them to the forefront, like an engine that had idled all this time.

How she wished she were in a courtroom instead of a toy store. That was the world she knew, could predict. But Nick Gilbert was about as predictable as a tiger in a butcher shop.

This was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

“Playing house,” Carolyn said, popping into action. “That’s what we need.”

Nick arched a brow. “You and me? Play house? I thought we already tried that and it didn’t work so well.”

“Not us. For…” Her mind went blank. Looking at Nick, thinking of playing house…oh, why had she thought she could do this? Just being here was a mistake. But she’d already made the deal and couldn’t renegotiate. Not with a lawyer and especially not with this one. “I meant for the child you’re sponsoring. Little girls, they like to play house. Pretend to go to the grocery store, set the table, all that.”

“But not you, right, Carolyn? Or did you ever have a moment when you did play house? When you imagined being a Mrs. for longer than a few days?”

“Me?” She snorted. “You know that is so not me. I don’t think I have a domestic bone in my body.”

“We still have that in common,” Nick said. “I’ve yet to become domesticated myself, though I am housebroken.” He grinned. “What about you? How have things been for you over the last three years?”

Carolyn reached for the nearest toy on the shelf. “How about this broom set for Angela?”

“I recognize this avoidance tactic. Divert attention from the personal and get back to work, right?”

“Nick, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”

“Oh, I’m serious, Carolyn.” He straightened, his demeanor slightly chilled. “As serious as you are.”

Then he started pushing the cart, heading down the aisle toward the faux food and make-believe vacuum cleaners. Now also all business and no play. Not anymore.

Carolyn wasn’t the least bit disappointed. Not the least.

“How about this for Angela?” Nick held up a pretend cooking set, plastic frying pans, spatulas, bright yellow faux eggs and floppy bacon. Little cardboard boxes of cereal marched up the side of the package, with cheery pretend names like Cocoa Crunchies and Corn Flakies.

“Perfect,” Carolyn said, coming up beside Nick and holding the other side of the package. Only a few inches separated them. When she inhaled, she caught the scent of his cologne again. She could sense the heat from his body, read the strength in his hands. She focused instead on the bright happy packaging, on the images of children sitting around a plastic table, pretending they were dining at a five-star mock-up restaurant. “When I was a little girl, they didn’t make toys like this. I was always taking the real thing out of the kitchen and if I didn’t have any friends over, I made my poor dad sit down for pretend meals. Oh, how I made that man suffer through tea parties with me and my bears.”

Nick chuckled softly. “My sisters used to try to do the same thing to me and my brothers but we were too fast. We’d steal the cookies and run like hell for the yard. Linda, Marla and Elise still think Daniel and I are the spawn of the devil because we ruined their plans to recreate the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

Carolyn laughed. “I never did get a chance to meet your family. I wish I had. They sound so fun.”

“They would have liked you.”

The words hung between them. They’d been married too short a time for meeting families—not that there’d been anyone on Carolyn’s side to meet. Anyone who would have cared about meeting Nick, anyway.

Had Nick told his family about her? Had he told his sisters about the woman who had stolen his heart, then broken it, all in the space of a month?

Carolyn shoved the thoughts away. She’d had good reasons, reasons Nick had refused to see at the time, refused to listen. He’d fought her, tooth and nail, telling her it could wait, that they’d just gotten married—stay awhile, don’t go, not yet—and not understanding at all that she’d had to go—

Had to get on that plane. She couldn’t sit in Indiana, acting the part of the happy wife, while the man who had killed her father went on another rampage. By the time she came home, the divorce was final. Nick had done the filing, taking care of the details, cleaning up the mess.

It was all for the best, she told herself again

“Let’s get the rest of Angela’s gifts,” Carolyn said, returning to business. Nick seemed relieved to do the same, and they made quick work of filling the cart with toys for the little girl.

“My turn to help you,” Nick said a little while later. “And for your information, little boys don’t want to play house, so let’s pick a different aisle.”

Work again. Concentrate on the project. Not the man.

Carolyn led the way as they headed over to the aisle of trucks and cars. Nick directed her toward the larger, more indestructible options. “This is what Bobby wants.” Nick hoisted up a red plastic truck large enough to transport a puppy.

“How do you know for sure? There’s this one, and that one, and the one down there.” Carolyn gestured all over the aisle, as confused as she had been an hour ago.

“I know because I was once a little boy. And I had one of these, except mine sported the less-knee-and-elbow-friendly metal finish.” Nick turned the box over in his hands, lost in a memory. “I had a lot of fun with that truck. I remember the Christmas I got it. I was five. Daniel was three. He came charging at me, wanting to play with the truck. Cut his chin open on the coffee table and he ended up in the emergency room on Christmas day, getting stitches.”

“Oh, my goodness. That must have been awful.”

Nick shook his head. “My mother is a saint. She could raise all five of us and run a household blindfolded. She shot off directions to my dad and the rest of us for how to put together Christmas dinner, loaded Daniel in the car and drove to the hospital, calm as a summer breeze. We, of course, butchered dinner without her there.” Nick laughed. “But when she came back, with Daniel all stitched up, she somehow made it all right and saved Christmas.”

Carolyn spun the loose plastic covering on the shopping handle. She thought of how her aunt Greta would have reacted to such an event. For one, it wouldn’t have happened because there’d been no big happy family around the Christmas tree. No turkey to stuff. No hectic gathering. But if there had been, Greta simply wouldn’t have allowed chaos to disrupt her house. In Aunt Greta’s house, chaos never, ever visited. It didn’t even walk down the sidewalk. And secondly, children didn’t take chances. They didn’t run. They didn’t ride their bikes down the sidewalk. They didn’t do anything death defying. “Your family sounds like something out of a novel.”

Nick smiled, then put the toy truck into the shopping cart. “Sometimes I think it was.” Nick paused midstep, then met her gaze, and for a fleeting second she wondered if he was reading her mind. “Carolyn—”

“Let’s get this shopping done. I need to get home. I have a ton of work waiting for me.” Carolyn started down the aisle, cutting off Nick and the attraction she read in his gaze.

Then the look disappeared, gone in a simple blink.

“Yeah, good idea. We should concentrate on the shopping,” Nick said, joining her by the race cars. “I have work waiting for me, too.”

Carolyn gave him a sidelong glance but couldn’t read anything in Nick’s face. Maybe she had read Nick wrong. Or maybe he had changed, maybe he wasn’t the man she remembered.

They finished the shopping trip, agreeing on their purchases easily. Before long, they’d found several hundred dollars worth of toys, much more than they’d expected to find or spend. The shopping spree had been fun, almost like—

Like when they’d gotten married. Never before had Carolyn gone without a plan, running by the seat of her pants, working purely on desire.

She hadn’t been thinking that week, simply doing. And for a moment she’d thought she could do it all. Be a wife, and maybe…down the road…a mother.

What if today’s toy buying hadn’t been a charity mission? What if they’d been shopping for their own child?

Where would they be now? Living in a three-bedroom house in some subdivision in Lawford, kissing each other goodbye over a cup of coffee every morning? Or would they have ended up exactly where they were—divorced, scarcely cordial colleagues? Nick still acting a lot like a college frat boy, Carolyn still the stiff Bostonian?

“Those kids are going to need a truck to haul all this home,” Nick said, interrupting her thoughts.

Carolyn smiled. “I think I saw some of those in aisle three.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Nick said, and in his eyes, she read more than just the desire to buy a ride-on toy.

There was a lingering desire for her. Still burning in his gaze. Emanating from his skin, his nearness. And who was she kidding? She still felt it, too.

But the past was over. And for a good reason.

They’d made a big mistake once. Only an idiot did that twice.