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

“A New York socialite my mother worked for gave me that figurine for my twelfth birthday.”

“Generous of her.”

“Yes and no. It was nothing to her but a kind gesture to the housemaid’s poor daughter. But to me … that little statue became my talisman. I kept it as a reminder of where it came from and where I came from. But, you know, it doesn’t matter that it broke.” She gave a little shrug. “I don’t need it anymore.”

Maybe not, but there was something about her explanation’s matter-of-fact tone that belied the lingering shadows in her eyes. She could shrug it off all she wanted now, but he’d been there. He’d witnessed the extent of her distress.

Damn it all to blazes, he’d caused it by backing her into the corner and shocking her with his kiss.

And here he was, forgetting himself again. Standing too close, infiltrating her personal space, breathing the sweet scent of roses and aching with the need to take her in his arms, to touch her petal-soft skin, to kiss every shadowed memory from her eyes and every other man from her rose-pink lips.

The physical desire he understood and could handle. It had been there from the outset, crackling in the air whenever they got too close. But this was more—dangerously, insidiously more—when he needed less.

“You mightn’t need it,” he said gruffly, “but it matters.”

“No. What matters is how Stuart wanted his wealth distributed. We talked about this—about which charities and the best way to help—but everything is tied up because of your legal challenge. Why are you doing this?” Her eyes darkened with determination. “Why, Tristan? Is it only about winning? Is it only about defeating me?”

“This isn’t about you.”

“Then what is it about?”

The first time she’d asked about his motivation, Tristan had turned it into a cross-examination. And she’d answered every one of his questions with honesty. The least he could do was offer equal candor. “It’s about justice, Vanessa.”

“Justice for whom?”

“My mother.” He met her puzzled eyes. “Did you know she got nothing from my parents’ divorce?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly. After fifteen years of marriage … nothing.”

“Is that how you count yourself, Tristan? As nothing?” Her voice rose with abject disbelief. “Is that how your mother counted what she took from Stuart?”

He’d heard the same message from Liz Kramer. She took you, Tristan, the most valuable thing.

But the other side to that equation set his jaw and his voice with hard-edged conviction. “She counted herself lucky to gain full custody.” Except to do so, to prevent an ugly court battle and a possible injunction preventing her move to Australia, she’d ceded her claim on a property settlement. “I guess that kind of payoff made me worth a hell of a lot.”

For a long moment his words hung between them, a cynically-edged statement that conveyed more of his past hurt than he’d intended. He could see that by her reaction, by the softening in her expression and the husky note in her voice. “He thought Andrea would reject that offer. He thought they would negotiate and reach an agreement of shared property and shared custody. He didn’t want to lose you, Tristan.”

“Then why didn’t he fight to keep me?”

She shook her head sadly. “He didn’t want to take you from your mother. It broke his heart to lose his whole family like that.”

“He kicked us out. He divorced my mother. His choices, Vanessa.”

“I was under the impression that Andrea was at fault,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “That she had an affair … which Stuart found out about and forgave. The first time.”

Tristan went still. “What do you mean, the first time?”

“I mean …” She paused, her face wreathed in uneasiness. “How much of this do you know? I’m not sure it’s my place—”

“You don’t think I need to hear this?”

She nodded once, a brief concession to his point, and moistened her lips. “He took her back because he still loved her and because she promised it was a once-only thing, because she was lonely, he was working too hard. He took her back and when she announced she was pregnant, he was ecstatic.”

“I know the twins aren’t Stuart’s,” he reassured her grimly. “I know they’re only my half sisters.”

“And that’s what broke his heart, don’t you see? She never told him. She let him believe they were his and she kept seeing the father before they were born and afterward.

When he caught her out again, when he did the paternity test and discovered the truth … that’s why the marriage ended, Tristan. And that’s why Stuart felt so strongly about adultery.”

He didn’t have to believe her but he did. It made too much sense not to. It tied everything together in a neat bow … and brought them looping back to his reason for being here in Eastwick. His reason for wanting, so vehemently, to defeat her.

“That’s why he added that clause to his will,” he said slowly. Not a question, but a statement.

Not because he suspected Vanessa of cheating, as Tristan had believed, but because of his own mother’s infidelity. Not one mistake, as she’d led Tristan to believe, but repeated betrayals. Which put her subsequent choices into perspective, too.

Her acceptance of the divorce settlement.

Her flight to Australia, in pursuit of the twins’ father.

Her objection to his challenge of Stuart’s will.

“Does Andrea know why you’re doing this? Is it what she wants?”

Vanessa’s soft voice cut straight into his thought process, as if she’d read his mind.

And when he didn’t answer, she added, “I thought as much.”

That jolted him hard. The initial questions, the way she’d read him so accurately, the knowledge that she’d turned his beliefs inside out.

Yet this had been his pursuit for two years, his conviction for longer. He would not toss it without hearing the truth from his mother. Not without considering all he’d learned this morning, away from the influence of steady green eyes and rose-scented skin.

Resolve tightened his features as he nodded to her bundle of flowers. “Shouldn’t you be putting those in water?”

She blinked with surprise, as if she’d been so intent on their discussion that she’d forgotten her morning’s purpose. “I … yes.”

“I need to go. I have some decisions to make.”

Hope fluttered like a bird’s wing in her eyes. “You’ll let me know … once you’ve decided.”

“You’ll be the first.”

He nodded goodbye and had gone maybe ten strides before she called his name. He paused. Turned to look over his shoulder and was floored again by the picture she made with the sunlight silhouetting her body and legs through that filmy pink robe.

Like the roses, he figured she’d forgotten her state of dress. Or undress. For both their sakes, he wasn’t about to point out what was clearly defined by the unforgiving light.

“The letter I told you about, from your father—I kept a copy. It’s yours, Tristan. If you like, I can go and get it for you.”

Eight

After Vanessa offered him the letter, Tristan had stood staring at her down the paved path, face and body both set hard and still as a Grecian statue. There’d been a dizzy moment when her imagination played memory tricks, stripping away his clothes to reveal sun-gilded skin and rippling pool-wet muscles. When he pointed out—his voice dark and quietly dangerous—that if she were going to fetch anything, it should be more clothes, she’d shaken her head with confusion.

How did he know she was picturing him near-naked? Was she that transparent?

One slow sweep of his shuttered gaze and she realized that, yes, courtesy of the sun’s backlighting, she was pretty darn transparent.

Oh, she’d played down her discomfiture. Ignoring any reference to clothing, she’d lifted her chin and invited him to wait in the foyer while she located the letter and a file box of photos and clippings and other memorabilia Stuart had kept.

At first she’d thought he wouldn’t bother taking them. Later she’d decided that his lack of response as she pushed them into his hands was all a crock. Vanessa understood the pretense. She, too, was a master at hiding her heart.

With an offhand shrug and a polite thanks he took them, presumably back to his hotel.

Vanessa should have been overjoyed to see the back of him and that morning’s intense emotional drama. She should have been thrilled that they’d finally talked through some of the misunderstandings and misinformation, and that he might now reconsider his stance on the will. But, no, his departure had left her feeling hollow and restless and anxious, her mind buzzing with more questions.

Twice she picked up the phone, once her car keys and purse, with a view to pressing him for answers. Did he have any ideas on who had written the letter that brought him to Eastwick? Would he continue to investigate its allegations? Or was his challenge of the will now over?

But she forced herself to wait. He needed time to digest Stuart’s heartfelt words, to come to grips with the truth of his split from Andrea and their subsequent custody settlement.

The hollowness in her middle grew into a raw ache when she thought about what he’d believed and what his mother had let him believe. From experience, Vanessa knew that twelve was a vulnerable age to have a parent cut from your life. To go through that in a new country, in a new school, without your friends, believing you’d been traded like a chattel in your parents’ divorce …

She hadn’t looked at this from Tristan’s side before. So much about the man now made sense. Those hard edges, his drive to succeed, this pursuit of an inheritance he didn’t need. It wasn’t all about doing the right thing by his mother; it was also about himself and the father he’d believed didn’t want him.

She could almost forgive him his resentment. If only he’d returned her calls or given her a chance to explain earlier, they could have avoided all this. And that thought added to her turmoil while she waited to discover what would happen next.

Tuesday morning she forced herself to push aside another restless night and her frustrating angst as she set about her usual routine … although she did take care to dress this time, before venturing out into the garden. Tuesday was one of her regular days at Twelve Oaks, and she cut enough blooms for several arrangements at the grand house and put them in water.

Next, she headed to the kitchen and mixed a double batch of chocolate cherry muffins. The precise processes involved in baking always calmed her. Picturing her brother’s blissed-out grin when he opened the container and discovered his favorite treat always brought a smile to her face. It still hovered—a happy curve of affection—when the timer chimed and she pulled the baking trays from the oven.

They’d turned out perfectly. Her smile broadened with satisfaction. Then she turned and looked up, and everything—her smile, her brain, her legs—froze.

But only for a split second. The instant their gazes connected she felt an ungoverned rush of heat all the way from her quick fix ponytail to her freshly painted toes.

“Where did you spring from?” she asked, her voice husky with astonishment. And, yes, a note of pleasure because of the way Tristan was looking at her and because, well, simply because he was here.

“Gloria let me in. I followed her up the drive.”

Vanessa had been so absorbed in her task she hadn’t heard the housekeeper’s arrival. After depositing the trays on cooling racks, she put a hand to her rapidly beating heart. “This is two mornings in a row you’ve sneaked up on me. You have to stop doing that.”

“Just evening up the score. You surprise me all the time.” He paused, taking in the sunshine yellow dress she’d chosen to empower her mood, before his gaze returned to her face. “Although at least today you’re dressed.”

Which did nothing to hide her reaction to the appreciation in his eyes or the satisfaction of knowing she surprised him. She felt the flush rolling through her skin and the tightening of her nipples against the lace of her bra. Today she might be dressed, but she had no bouquet of roses to hide behind.

“Where’s Gloria?” she asked, shifting the conversation to neutral ground.

“Putting away the … things … you loaned me.”

The letter and photos? Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. You didn’t have to return them. They are yours to keep.”

“I don’t need them.”

“Maybe, but I want you to have them. Stuart would have wanted that.”

Something quickened in his eyes, a flash of emotion, of sorrow or regret, but he lifted a shoulder and it was gone. Shed like a stray leaf.

He strolled farther into the room and inclined his head toward the marble island. “You bake?”

So. He didn’t want to talk about the letter or his father. Vanessa’s stomach dipped with disappointment. But what could she do? Perhaps if he stayed a while, perhaps if she went along with the teasing note to his question and kept it light, she could steer the conversation back.

“Yes, I bake.” She arched her eyebrows at the racks of cooling muffins. “Behold the evidence.”

Palms flattened on the countertop, he leaned over to breathe the rich aroma. His eyes rose up to hers, and the look of sybaritic pleasure on his face turned her knees to jelly. “Chocolate chip?”

“Chocolate cherry. With coconut.”

“Are they as good as they smell?”

Showing off a bit, she deftly loosened the first batch of muffins and turned them onto the cooling rack. A dozen, each one perfectly formed. She looked up and smiled. “Better.”

“Do you cook anything else?”

“I know my way around a kitchen.”

He chuckled, and that unexpected appreciation did nothing to help strengthen Vanessa’s jelly-knees. “Maybe I should have taken Frank’s prompt and angled to come stay here instead of the Marabella.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would have been a good idea,” she countered. “The two of us trying to share a house.”

It was only banter, deliberately lighthearted as they danced around the reason for his visit and the topic she desperately wanted to address. But in the short hesitation before he answered, Vanessa caught the glimmer of heat in his eyes and the mood changed. An unspoken acknowledgment of their attraction stretched between them, as palpable as the rich scent of oven-warm chocolate.

“No,” he said, much too seriously. “Not a good idea.”

To break the tension, she offered him coffee. Perhaps, then, she could broach the question of what next.

“Do I get anything with the coffee?”

Muffins, Ms. Pragmatist muttered in her ear. He’s talking about muffins. “I guess I can spare you one.”

“The rest being for …?”

Fussing with the coffee making, she answered automatically. “The guys at Twelve Oaks.”

“This is the place where you volunteer? Where your friend Andy works?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting name. Twelve Oaks.”

Vanessa looked up sharply. Nothing showed in his expression beyond curiosity but, still, she was so used to not talking about Twelve Oaks, to protecting this part of her life from scrutiny. “That’s the name of the estate,” she explained carefully. “A grand old Georgian home with separate servants’ quarters and stables and a small farm. The owner willed it to a foundation that worked with the developmentally disabled and they developed it into a residential facility.”

“What do you do there?”

“I help the therapists. Tuesdays it’s with arts and crafts. On Thursdays we cook.” She rolled her eyes. “Chick stuff.”

He didn’t counter with a teasing quip as she’d imagined, and she felt him looking at her differently, with a new respect or admiration that she did not deserve. If not for Lew, she would never have known about Twelve Oaks. She would never have gotten involved.

“I don’t do very much, as it happens, and what I do is not exactly selfless.”

“How long is your session this morning?”

Frowning at his question—where had that come from?—she looked up and got tangled in the intentness of his blue, blue eyes. “Does it matter?”

“I had this idea of going with you.” He let go a huff of breath. “Bad idea.”

“Why?”

“I have a plane to catch this afternoon.”

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