Society Wives: Love or Money: The Bought-and-Paid-for Wife

“Hello.”

Vanessa started so violently she almost dropped her phone.

By the time she’d recovered and compelled her heart to stop racing and pressed the tiny handset to her ear, he was repeating his greeting and asking if anyone was there. His voice was unmistakable, a deep, thick drawl colored by his years down under. That color matched the sun-tinged ends of his rich brown hair, the deep tan of his skin, but not the alert intensity of his eyes.

She felt a ripple of hot-cold response, as if those eyes were on her again. Those eyes and his mouth—

“It’s Vanessa,” she said quickly, staunching that memory. “Vanessa Thorpe.”

Silence.

“I wasn’t expecting to find you in.”

“You weren’t expecting …” he murmured, slightly puzzled, slightly mocking. “And yet you called?”

“I thought you might be out for dinner. I intended leaving a message.”

“A different message to the one you left me with earlier?”

Vanessa counted to five slowly. He knew she’d been spitting mad when she ordered him out of her house. And he knew why, blast him. She was not going to let that cynical taunt get to her. She had to do this. For Lew. For Andy. For her own guilty conscience. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I meant, in person.”

In the next beat of silence she could almost feel his stillness, that hard-edged intensity fixed on her from fifty-odd miles away. Ridiculous, she knew, but that didn’t stop a tight feeling of apprehension from gripping her stomach.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

With a full schedule of committee meetings plus a trip to Lexford to see how Lew was doing after today’s dramas, her only free hour was first thing in the morning. And the idea of inviting him to her home, or arranging to meet for breakfast somewhere else, caused every cell in her body to scream in protest. Breakfast meant straight out of bed. Breakfast also meant a long night of worry and endless opportunity to change her mind.

“Tonight would suit me better.” Vanessa closed her eyes and tried to block out how bad an idea this might turn out to be. “Do you have plans?”

“I have a dinner reservation downstairs.”

“I’m sure they will hold your table.”

“I’m sure they would,” he countered. “If I asked them to.”

She sucked in a breath, but she couldn’t suck back her sharp retort. “Are you deliberately trying to antagonize me?”

“I don’t think either one of us has to try. Do you?”

Okay. So he wasn’t going to make this easy, but that didn’t mean she would give up. “Are you dining alone?”

“Why do you ask? Would you like to break bread with me?”

“I would like,” she enunciated, after ungritting her teeth, “to speak to you. If you’re dining alone, I thought that may provide an opportunity without intruding on your plans.”

Another pause in which she could almost hear him sizing up the implications of her request. Then, he said, “I’ll have the restaurant add another setting.”

“Just a chair,” she said quickly. “I won’t be eating so please don’t wait for me. I’ll be there in an hour.”

“I look forward to it, duchess.”

Tristan had drawled that closing line with a liberal dose of mockery, but he did look forward to Vanessa’s arrival. Very much. He couldn’t wait to see how she explained her rapid turnaround from get out of my house to I need to talk. He could have made it easy on her by changing his dinner booking and meeting her downstairs in the lounge bar or the more private library. He could have offered to drive out to her house, to save her the trip into town.

But after witnessing her rendezvous at Old Poynton, knowing she’d rushed helter-skelter to her lover right after scoffing at the letter’s allegations, he was in no mood for making anything easy for Vanessa.

So. She wanted to talk. Most likely to spin a story concocted during that intense seaside heart-to-heart. He couldn’t imagine her confessing but she might attempt to explain away her secret meetings with lover boy. Whichever way she played it, he was ready.

This time she wouldn’t catch him unawares.

This time he would keep his hormones on ice.

Resisting the urge to check his watch, he poured a second glass of wine and pushed his dinner plate aside. He’d requested a table at the end of the terrace, where, in secluded peace, he could pretend to enjoy the food and the shimmer of reflected moonlight off the darkened waters of the Sound. Where he wouldn’t be scanning the door for the distinctive shimmer of moonlight-blond hair.

Still, he sensed her arrival several minutes later. Without turning he knew her footsteps and felt the quickening of anticipation in his blood. When he started to rise from his chair, she waved him back down. Her warm smile was all for the waiter who fussed over seating her—not opposite but catercorner to him.

“So madam, too, can enjoy the view.”

She thanked Josef and while he took her order for some ridiculous froufrou coffee, Tristan kicked back in his chair and tried not to notice that she still wore the same pink sundress.

Because she hadn’t yet gone home? Because she’d spent all this time at Old Poynton … doing what?

Only walking? Only talking?

The questions—and the possibility in the answers—snarled through him, sharp and mean. For a long moment he continued to stare at her, waiting for Josef to leave. Waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. Waiting for the impulse to ask those questions to pass so he could speak with some civility.

He took a sip from his very civilized sauvignon blanc. “Traffic bad?”

She’d been fussing with her purse, setting it just so on the table, but she looked up sharply.

“You said an hour.”

“Have I held you up?” Her expression was polite, her voice as cool and dry as his wine. “If you have another appointment, you should have said when I called. I didn’t mean—”

“My only appointment is upstairs, with my bed. It’s been a long day.”

Across the table, their gazes met and held. Comprehension flickered in her eyes, like an unspoken wince of sympathy. “I’m sorry. You must have started the day yesterday, on the other side of the world.”

And didn’t that seem a long time ago? He should have been wiped out but instead he felt energized. By her presence, by her proximity, by the subtle drift of her perfume in the still night air. But mostly by the promise of another skirmish in their ongoing battle.

“I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about my long day.” And there was something in her eyes or in his primed-for-combat blood, that pushed him to add, “Or my current need to get horizontal.”

“No.” She answered without pause, without dropping eye contact, without responding to his deliberate provocation. “I didn’t.”

“So. What do you want?”

“I want to see the letter.”

Tristan arched an eyebrow. “You don’t believe it exists?”

“Is there any reason I should?”

“I’ve flown ten thousand miles today on the strength of it.”

“So you say.”

Rocking back in his chair, he met the steady challenge of her gaze. “If the lover doesn’t exist and the letter doesn’t exist, why are you worried?”

“Do I look worried?”

“You’re here.”

Irritation flared in her eyes but before she could respond, Josef arrived with her coffee. She smiled up at the young waiter, her annoyance instantly concealed by an expression as warm and friendly as when she’d opened the door that afternoon. Then Tristan cleared his throat and the subtle reminder of his presence wiped all the warmth from her face. Exactly the same as when she’d found him on her doorstep.

“I am here,” she said tightly, “to see this letter. If it exists.”

“Oh, it exists, duchess. Same as your lover.” Turning the wineglass with his fingers, he waited a second before continuing. “A little young, isn’t he?”

A frown marred the smooth perfection of her face. “Josef?”

“Lover boy. At Old Poynton.”

“How do you …” Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened as the inference took hold. “You followed me this afternoon?”

“Inadvertently.”

“You accidentally followed me? For fifty miles?”

One shoulder lifted in a negligent shrug. “I took a wrong turn. You sped by. I thought it might be interesting to find out who you needed to see in such a godfire hurry.”

Vanessa stared across at him with a growing sense of horror and violation. Not the chill shivers of earlier, when she’d thought about being spied on, but a hot wave of outrage. Because he’d done this. Not some anonymous stranger, but this man. Sitting beside her and passing this off as if it were a big fat nothing.

For a long second she had to fight the urge to hurl something at him. The closest something was her cinnamon mocha macchiato, untouched and still hot enough to do serious damage. The need steamed through her, curling her fingers so tightly around the coffee cup’s handle, she was afraid it might crack under the pressure.

Not good, Vanessa. Not cool. Not restrained. Not gracious.

Not any of the things she loved about this lifestyle she’d adopted.

Through sheer force of willpower she loosened her grip, but she couldn’t risk speaking for fear of the words she might hurl in lieu of the physical. She couldn’t even look at him, in case that fired her rage anew. To remind herself of the very public venue and her very elegant surroundings and the very real need to gather some restraint, she looked past his shoulder at the restaurant and the other diners.

Even on a Tuesday night the Marabella’s celebrated restaurant was close to capacity, the crowd an even mix of well-heeled tourists and business suits and elegantly dressed locals. Many she recognized; several she knew well enough to call friends. Frank Forrester, one of Stuart’s old golfing buddies, tipped his silver head and winked broadly when he caught her eye.

Smiling back, she breathed a silent sigh of relief that Frank’s company didn’t include his wife. The last thing she needed was Delia Forrester sauntering over to flutter eyelashes and flaunt her latest chest augmentation at the new man in town. And if Delia were present, she would notice Tristan. She would saunter and flutter and flaunt because that’s what Delia did in the presence of men, despite the husband she gave every appearance of doting on.

“What’s the matter, duchess? Afraid you’ll be seen with me?”

Tristan’s soft drawl cut through her reflection, drawing her attention back to him. When her gaze collided with his—sharp, steady, the rich ocean blue darkened like night on the water—she experienced a brief pulse of disorientation, almost like vertigo.

“Not at all,” she replied crisply, shaking off that weird sensation. What was the matter with her? Why did she let him get to her so easily, in so many ways? “We are here to discuss business, the same as these gentlemen—” she spread her hands, indicating the sprinkling of suits around them “—and the real estate reps over by the door.”

When his gaze followed hers, taking in the company, Vanessa’s heart gave a tiny bump of discovery.

She’d hit upon the ideal segue back to Andy and this afternoon’s meeting and the ridiculous misconception about an affair. “I don’t mind being seen with you, Tristan,” she said in a smooth, even voice, while her insides tightened and twisted over where this conversation might lead. “It’s no different from two people meeting, say, at the shore, to talk business.”

“Your meeting this afternoon was business?”

Lifting her chin, she met his sardonic gaze. “I do voluntary work at a facility for the developmentally disabled up near Lexford. Andy works there as a counselor.”

“And you meet him, about your volunteering, at the shore? After hours?”

“Not usually.” She moistened her lips. Chose the next words with careful precision. “Andy isn’t only a work associate, you see. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same school. He’s a good friend and we do meet after hours, sometimes, and not always to talk about my volunteering. Given his profession, Andy is a good listener.”

“And today—this afternoon—you needed to talk.”

“To vent,” she corrected.

“About me.”

“Who else?”

He didn’t counter for a tick, and there was something in his expression that started a drumbeat of tension in her blood, a beat that slowed and thickened when his gaze dropped to her lips. “Did you tell him about our kiss?”

The intimacy of his words washed through her, at first warm and strong with remembered sensations and then all wrong. Our kiss denoted sharing. A lovers’ kiss, hushed with reverence and sweet with romance, not imbued with bitter disdain and the bite of angry words.

She shook her head. “That wasn’t a kiss.”

“No?”

“It was a power play, and you know it.”

A note of surprise flickered in the darkened depths of his eyes. “Was it really so bad?”

“As far as kisses go, it fell a long way short of good.”

He rocked back in his chair, his expression trickily hard to gauge. Then he shocked the devil out of her by laughing—a low, lazy chuckle that stayed on his lips and tingled through her body like the sparks of a slow-burning fuse.

“Here’s where I should say, I can do better.”

“To which I would reply, you won’t ever get that second chance.”

Treacherous territory, Ms. Pragmatist warned her. She’d challenged him before. In the keeping room today, for example, and even before today’s first face-to-face confrontation they’d employed words to cut and thrust, in terse e-mails and messages delivered via their respective attorneys.

But this verbal sparring held a different edge.

This came in the shadow of laughter, with a lazy smile and a dangerous shot of pleasure because Vanessa sensed that, finally, she had managed to surprise him in a positive way. That shouldn’t have pleased her quite so much. She should have felt repelled by the prospect of another kiss, a real kiss, with no agenda other than exploring—

No. She jolted upright, appalled that she’d been staring at his lips. That she’d allowed the marine-scented air and the witchery of a full moon to lure her from her evening’s task.

No more, Ms. Pragmatist admonished. Get to the point and get out of here.

“Andy is not my lover. He never was. He never will be.” She laid it on the line in a resolute rush. “If he is named in that letter, I think it’s only fair that he should know.”

“There are no names.”

“Can I see?”

“Now?” He showed his hands, palms up, empty. “Not possible. It’s in my lawyer’s hands.”

“You didn’t waste any time.”

“You had your chance this afternoon, when I came to your house. It was you who suggested we deal through our lawyers.”

Yes, she remembered. She also remembered what had made her so spitting mad that she’d kicked him out without seeing the letter. Blast him and her own sorry self for not asking over the phone. She could have saved herself the drive and the aggravation and the gossip she’d no doubt started by meeting him in this public place.

Tight frustration prickled at the back of her throat, but she lifted her chin and ruthlessly shoved that emotion aside. “Could you please arrange for a copy to be sent to my lawyer’s office tomorrow?”

“First thing,” he replied with surprising compliance.

Prepared for their usual slanging match, Vanessa stared at him through narrowed eyes. What was the hitch? What angle was he playing? He held her gaze for a long moment, steady, blue, guileless, and there was nothing left to say.

Nothing left to do, except get out of there before she started trusting his word.

“Fine.” With a brief, decisive nod, she reached for her purse. A shadow fell across their table. And Frank Forrester’s distinctive longtime smoker’s voice rasped through the silence.

“Sorry for the intrusion, but I couldn’t leave without saying hello to my second favorite blonde. Given my rusty old ticker—” he tapped a thin hand against his chest and winked “—I don’t put off till tomorrow.”

Although Frank often quipped about his age and his heart condition, Vanessa couldn’t voice her usual light-hearted reproach. Not only because he’d interrupted her getaway, either. Up close he looked a decade older than his years, frail and slight and stooped.

Smiling up at him, she only hoped her shock at his appearance didn’t show on her face.

“Your company is never an intrusion,” she assured him. And because it was the gracious thing to do, she added, “Would you care to join us? For coffee or a nightcap?”

“No, no. I’m on my way home. Can’t dally.” But he made no move to leave and his gaze glinted with genuine interest—or curiosity—as it edged toward her companion and back.

As much as she’d have liked to, Vanessa couldn’t ignore the hint. “Tristan, meet Frank Forrester. Frank, this is Stuart’s son. From Australia.”

“You don’t say?” Frank shook his head slowly, his gaze beetling in on the younger man’s face. “You’ve grown some since I last saw you, lad. You were a weedy young beanpole then. It must be at least fifteen years.”

“Twenty,” Tristan said. And he was on his feet, shaking hands. Being clapped on the back in the male version of an embrace.

“Welcome back to Eastwick, lad. Welcome home!”

Vanessa blinked with surprise. She hadn’t considered they might know one another, despite the former bank president’s longtime friendship with Stuart. And as for the welcome home—the concept of Tristan belonging here in Eastwick was almost as unsettling as seeing him in her home that afternoon.

“Suppose you’re here on business,” Frank mused. “You started up a telecom, didn’t you? Heard you’d turned it into one of the Pacific’s major players.”

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of us.”

Frank made a gruff sound. “Your father was a proud man. He wasn’t above crowing your successes.”

If this came as a surprise to Tristan, he didn’t show it. No shift in his expression, no acknowledgment, no mention of his father. Just a smoothly offered, “I recently sold out of the company, as it happens.”

“You don’t say.”

“It was an attractive offer.”

“Made a killing, eh?”

Tristan’s smile came quick and unexpected, its impact a devil of awareness that settled low in her belly. She had to force herself to concentrate on his words. Not the sharp line of his jaw or the curve of his lips. Not the sudden recall of those lips against hers, but his words.

He’s sold his business. Does that mean this trip is open-ended? That nothing will prevent him staying in Eastwick for as long as it took?

“Are you asking as a friend or a banker?” he asked.

Frank chuckled. “I’m an old man. Retired, didn’t you know?”

“Once a banker, always a banker.”

Suppressing a smile, Vanessa looked away. Apparently she needed her own mantra: once a brute, always a brute. Just to remind herself what lurked behind that slow, charismatic grin.

“You’ll have to come for dinner one night,” Frank suggested. “If you’re in town for more than a day or two.”

“That depends—” she felt the glancing touch of a sharp blue gaze “—on my business.”

“Are you staying with Vanessa? Even better. Why don’t you both come?”

Staying with her? In her home? Her heart did a little stumbling hitch as their eyes met. No way.

They both spoke at once.

“He’s not staying with me, actually.”

“I’m staying here. At the Marabella.”

Oblivious to the sudden tension in the air, Frank dug around in his jacket until he unearthed a card. He pressed it into Tristan’s hand. “Even more reason to join us for a meal, lad. Call me when you know your plans.”

They said their goodbyes and Frank started to leave. Then he stopped, one hand raised, as if struck by a sudden notion. He turned back. “Is that polo do this weekend, Vanessa?”

“It’s on Sunday, yes. But I don’t—”

“Perfect!” Frank spoke over the top of her objection. “Why don’t you join us?”

“Polo?”

Tristan sounded dubious and Frank nodded sympathetically. “Damn sissy sport if you ask me, but my wife seems to like it.”

Champagne, celebrities, studly Argentinean players. Of course Delia liked the polo.

Vanessa did not, particularly, but Sunday’s match was a fund-raiser for Eastwick Cares, one of her favored charities since it dealt with at-risk youth. The kind of place she and Lew might have needed, had their lives taken a slightly different turn. So, no, she couldn’t not go to the polo match, although the idea of sharing the same luncheon tent as Tristan and Delia made her stomach pitch.

“Everybody will be there,” Frank continued. “Great chance to catch up. Ain’t that right, Vanessa?”

Something sharpened in Tristan’s gaze as it fastened on her face. A sense of purpose that she instantly recognized for what it was: he would go to the polo match, all right. And he would use the opportunity to quiz people about her.

“That’s right, Frank. Anybody who’s anybody will be there.” She smiled, but the effort felt as forced as her jovial tone. “Unfortunately that means all the invitations were snapped up months ago.”

Frank waved that away with a tremulous hand. “Delia will rake up a ticket if need be. Let me know, lad.”

With a sinking heart, Vanessa watched his unsteady meandering departure. Delia could wangle an extra invitation if she set her mind and her saccharine-sweet charm and Frank’s checkbook to it. There was nothing Vanessa could do without appearing petty or vindictive, and right now all she wanted was escape.

But as she gathered up her purse she felt Tristan’s focus switch to her.

The instant she turned into the sharp cast of those blue, blue eyes, she knew what was coming next. Like a freight train barreling through the night, she saw the oncoming light and couldn’t do a thing to divert the wreck.

“Who is Delia?” he asked, right on cue.

Twenty years ago, when Tristan left Eastwick, Frank had been married to his first wife. Now Vanessa would have to explain the new, younger, recently acquired model and he would draw the inevitable comparison. Vanessa had heard it all before. She and Delia were not kindred spirits—as Delia had wanted to believe when she first sailed into the choppy waters of Eastwick society—but they had both improved their financial and social status immeasurably when they married significantly older men.

She could not speak for Delia’s motives, but she had married Stuart for his money. It was the one fact Tristan had got absolutely right.

Four

“Delia is Frank’s current wife.”

“His current wife?” Tristan asked. “How many Mrs. Forresters have there been, exactly?”

“Delia is the third.”

Not unusual in a place as affluent as Fairfield County, with men as wealthy as Frank Forrester. Or Stuart Thorpe. “Has she been the current Mrs. Forrester for long?”

“Delia and Frank met at this same charity polo event last summer. She was working as a freelance journalist, I believe, and she chose to feature Frank in an article on business leaders who’d retired here on the gold coast. They married soon after.”

Alerted by the measured choice to her words and the defensive tilt of her chin, Tristan narrowed his eyes. “Love at first sight?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“I haven’t met Delia. You tell me.”

“You know, that’s never come up in conversation,” she countered coolly. “I’m not that close to Delia and, frankly, I’m not comfortable discussing her.”

Tristan studied her for a moment, his interest piqued by the words and the attitude. Obviously she got along fine with Frank … but not his wife? He had to wonder about that.

And since she was tucking her dinky little purse under her arm with a note of I’m-about-to-leave finality, he might as well wonder out loud.