The Bought-and-Paid-For Wife

“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.

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