The Millionaire's Cinderella Wife

“That’s what you think about marriage? About our marriage?”

If he hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. “Pretty much.” His voice sounded like gravel rolling slowly in a cement mixer.

Sierra felt both hurt and angered that he would look at their four years as man and wife so cynically. No wonder he hadn’t been in any hurry about a divorce, before this. He clearly had no intention of falling into the marriage trap again any time soon, so he didn’t need the legal freedom. For different reasons, neither had she.

Beyond the hurt and anger, however, she was still thinking about the fact that he’d actually asked.

Asked her.

For a favor.

More than a favor. He’d said he needed her help. Self-sufficient Ty Garrett, who’d once had a chip on his shoulder the size of a tree trunk and wouldn’t have admitted to needing anything in case somebody noticed, and who in fact never had needed anything, judging by the success he’d made of his life without anyone else’s input…That same Ty Garrett had just looked her right in the eye and asked for her help.

Sierra didn’t have time to explore the reason why, but it was the thing that tipped the balance for her, in the end—the fact that he’d actually asked for her help. If it wouldn’t create problems for her family, she would stay in Stoneport a little longer and do what Ty wanted. Along the way, she might get a few answers to questions about their marriage that she hadn’t known she still had.

“I’ll have to call home,” she said, and saw him frown.

“That’s your basis for a decision? Whether you’re needed at home?”

“It’s a factor.”

He was silent for a moment as if debating his reply, but finally he just shrugged and said, “We’ll head out to my place, then. Take a look at it, see what you think, and you can make the call.”

He took the back streets, leaving Sierra with the impression of a town that had found its feet as an attractive vacation spot and commercial hub for smaller surrounding communities.

She saw old Victorian houses spruced up as antique stores, restaurants, craft boutiques and bed-and-breakfast enterprises. On the far side of the harbor, which opened onto the sheltered waters of Carteret Sound, she saw a nineteenth century brick warehouse converted to upscale apartments, and on the way out of town there were signs indicating a theme park, hiking trails and golf.

Within a few minutes, they’d left Stoneport behind to thread their way along Onslow Banks, where the road offered stunning glimpses of green and white Atlantic breakers rolling onto the shore.

“You’re not in town?” she asked.

“Not far out. Another couple of minutes…Here.”

Wow.

Not a sterile apartment, not a lavish mansion, and definitely not a hotel suite. Instead, Ty had a year-round beach-house that was every bit a home. Set high up behind the dunes to put it out of reach of all but the strongest storms and tides, and surrounded by a wide wooden deck, it looked quirky and unique and as if it had grown in that spot.

It pretty much had, Sierra soon found.

“Built by one of the fishing fleet owners a hundred years ago,” Ty told her. “When nothing else was out here. Quite an eccentric guy, I understand. It started out as just a cottage, but his descendants added to the place over the years which is why it looks…a mess, I guess.”

“No!”

“You don’t think so?”

“It has character.” Sierra forgot to feel self-conscious about telling him what she really thought. “Feels as if it’s inviting me in, to explore. That little window up top is winking at me, and that set of stairs disappearing round the corner is asking if I can guess what I’ll find.”

“Round the corner? There’s a bench and seats built into the deck. Then there’s a kind of Florida room, with a—You’ll see. Come in and make that call to your family.”

“They’ll be fine, I’m sure,” she said, then realized it sounded like a definite commitment to stay. “But if they’re not, then the deal’s off,” she added, offering herself a way out.

He led her, business-like, into a large living area that opened onto a stunning deck, and pointed to a phone sitting on a small antique desk. “That’s my private line. I have a business line in my office, right here, and I need to make a couple of calls myself, so just make yourself at home.”

He indicated the direction of kitchen, bathroom and spare-room, then disappeared into the adjacent office, and Sierra sat down at the living room desk and picked up the phone. Her youngest sister Lena answered and assured her, “We’re fine, Sierra. Absolutely. Don’t worry.”

“You’re making sure Dad tests his blood sugar levels when he’s supposed to, right?”

“He took a test yesterday—”

“Just one?”

“—and it was a little high. But don’t worry. I’ll nag him about it.”

“And did Angie pick up the dry-cleaning? Because he has that big function on Saturday and he needs the suit.”

“I’ll check. But you’ll be back by then, won’t you?”

“I’m thinking of staying a little longer.”

“Why? Ty’s not making trouble, is he? Won’t he give you the divorce? I’d have thought he’d be only too happy about it.”

“Yes. No. I mean, yes, we’re both only too happy about it, but that’s not it.”

How should she explain?

She sat back in the chair and let her gaze drift to the view from the windows on the far side of the room. Across the undulating, sea-grass-covered dunes, the Atlantic Ocean crashed onto the beach, perpetually scouring it clean. The summer air made a symphony of color and light—dazzling sun, powdery sky, salt spray hanging like a transparent curtain.

It was so beautiful that it hurt, and it did something to her soul that felt painful and good at the same time, like an aerobic stretch.

“He’s…asked me for help with something, that’s all,” she continued to Lena. “And I kind of feel that I owe—”

Lena wasn’t interested in what Sierra kind of felt she owed. “How long?”

“Ten days, maybe a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks? I have summer classes, and my job, and Dad’s going to want one of us to do your First Lady thing at the dinner on Saturday, if you’re not here. To be honest, Sierra, his blood sugar was, like, quite a lot too high yesterday. I didn’t want to worry you…”

Sierra felt her temples tightening. She closed her eyes and forgot about the view of the ocean.

Okay, she’d have to coach Lena or Angie through the blood sugar and insulin thing again. Or Dad himself. But he just didn’t seem able to grasp it, with all the other commitments he had between his business and his city hall duties, and anyhow he always thought she was overreacting. So what if his sugar level was a little high?

“Well, okay, ten days,” she said. “Max. I guess it shouldn’t take more than that to…uh…handle this problem Ty needs help with. Maybe even just a week.”

Maybe she could tell Ty he was on his own. He’d spent the past eight years proving that he could be happy that way. Why should his brief admission of need strike her as so important?

She took a big breath and said to Lena, “Listen, I’m going to print out an exact summary of what Dad needs to do, at what times of day, and what he needs to watch out for, and I’m going to fax it to you. I’m sorry, I thought he had a better handle on it after all this time. His doctor is a phone call away, and so am I, on my cell or here, and the bottom drawer of the desk in my room is filled with diabetic education brochures and booklets.”

“Booklets?” Lena sounded skeptical and daunted.

“They’re actually not that hard to read and understand. You and Angie and Jordy were too young when Mom died, so I took over from her with managing Dad’s illness, but you’re all old enough now.”

Even during the years of her marriage, Sierra had stopped in at Dad’s a couple of times, most days, to help him with his shots and his blood sugar tests. She’d also helped him as much as she could with the younger three, and handed out leaflets for his mayoral election campaign.

She finished, “I’m not expecting you to push Dad to handle it himself. I’ll do that when I get back.”

How? Dad was stubbornly determined to stay as ignorant as possible about his disease.

Sierra decided to ignore this problem until she was actually home again.

“You can handle it, okay?” she said to her twenty-two year old sister, using the same encouraging tone she used to her special needs pupils when they struggled with their math.

“Yeah, I know,” Lena said. “But we just really miss you, okay?”

Which was why Sierra let herself remain the lynch-pin that kept the whole Taylor family together and functioning, ultimately. Because she knew she was loved.

“I miss you guys, too,” she said, then gave Lena the phone number here at Ty’s and ended the call.

Apparently Ty himself was still busy in his office, and the door was closed. He’d told her to make herself at home so she explored a little. Huge, gorgeous granite and wood kitchen; Florida room full of quirky, beachy furniture; wide wooden deck; powder room with decor befitting a five-star New York hotel.

Like the living room, the spare-room he’d designated for her overlooked the dunes and the ocean, on its own up a flight of stairs right at the top of the sprawling, higgledy-piggledy house. Since the room had windows on three sides, Sierra could see up the coast as far as the opening into Carteret Sound, and down the coast as far as a tall Carolina lighthouse with its broad, distinctive stripes.

French doors opened out to a narrow, wood-railed balcony that also skirted the room on three sides. A widow’s walk? Was that what it should be called? Sierra wondered about it as she paced to one end of the balcony and back again, before pausing just to lean on the railing and look at the beach. She didn’t know for sure. She’d only been to the Atlantic shore twice, both times down in Florida, which had felt very different to this.

Taking a deep breath of the fresh, salty air, she felt a surge of energy and anticipation that made sense when she thought about how long it was since she’d taken a real vacation.

Years.

Ever?

Never on her own, for sure. Dad wouldn’t have felt safe about her doing that, in case his diabetes gave him trouble. She and Dad had always gone to places that were easy, like Disneyworld with Lena, Angie and Jordy when they were younger.

Once they’d taken a special cruise with medical facilities on board that were equipped to handle diabetic complications. That had been fun. And relaxing, when Lena and Angie weren’t fighting. They’d been sixteen and seventeen then, which meant the cruise had happened, gosh, six years ago, already.

“I’m on vacation,” Sierra said aloud.

The breeze caught her words and took them away out to sea, so she said it again, louder. “I’m—on—vacation!” And then she laughed.

It felt good.

But it got more complicated as soon as she heard Ty’s voice, calling her from downstairs. The vacation came with conditions and obligations attached.

“I need to get back to the marina,” he told her as soon as she came down to him. He already had car keys jingling in his hand. “How about I drop you at your hotel on the way? Then you can check out, and—You drove from Ohio, right, so you have your car?”

“Yes.”

“Can you find your way back here? I’ll give you a map for back-up. And a key, of course, and a garage door opener. The alarm’s easy. I’ll show you the code.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“And your folks are okay?”

“Seem to be.” She didn’t mention Dad’s blood sugar, or Lena’s doubts about the proposed length of her absence. Maybe this really would only take a few days.

She noticed that Ty had never actually asked if she agreed to his plan. He just assumed she’d found the house and the sleeping arrangements satisfactory and her family’s reassurances good enough. Typical, on his part. But she didn’t feel inclined to protest about his assumptions now.

“So drop off your stuff here,” he said. “Get settled in your room, have coffee, sunbake on the deck, whatever you want.”

“Type up something on your computer and fax it to Ohio?”

“Sure. I’ll leave you my cell number in case you have any trouble with the machine.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Then it would be…really useful…if you could meet me at the marina office, in a very public way, and we can go for lunch at the bar. That’s pretty casual. Tonight, dinner at Nautilus would be great, and that’s dressier, so if you didn’t bring the right clothes I can give you the names of a couple of boutiques and you can shop for something this afternoon.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll cover the tab, of course. Tomorrow—shades of irony, here—I’m dining with the mayor, who’s a friend, and it’ll be pretty formal, so if you could get a second dress—”

“How about you print out the full program for me with wardrobe requirements, as a handy reference,” she cut in.

He stopped with his hand stretched to open the door leading to the double garage, and looked at her.

She glared at him. “Don’t say that thing about sucking on a lemon again, okay?”

“Actually, I was going to apologize.”

“For the lemon thing?”

“For bull-dozing you too much. Do you need more time? Are you committed to this?”

“Are you offering me an out?”

“We’ve both agreed on an out where it counts, with the marriage.”

Not “our” marriage, she noticed. Just “the” marriage. As impersonal as you could get. Not that she wanted to argue with that. But it was…sad. Even after so long.

“I’m committed,” she said.

Maybe if they could spend a few civilized, conflict-free days together, she wouldn’t go home to Ohio with quite such a sense that they’d both failed. Maybe she would discover why his admission of need seemed important.

“Great!” he answered. “We can make this work exactly the way we need it to, I know it.” Sierra would have liked a couple of words added, like “thanks” and “I really appreciate it,” but she wasn’t surprised when they didn’t happen.

In his garage, she discovered the silver Porsche, holding pride of place right in the middle, with plenty of space on all sides. The poor, loyal old decoy sedan was relegated to a stretch of raked gravel at the side of the house, where anyone snooping around would see it and think it belonged to the yard man or the cleaner.

They roared back into town in the Porsche, and when Sierra went to the hotel’s front desk to check out after Ty had roared off again, the man at the desk asked her at once, “You a friend of Mr. Garrett’s?”

“Sort of,” she said. Not the answer Ty would have wanted, so she added, “His wife, actually.” She saw the raised eyebrows across the desk, but didn’t deal with them because she was too busy dealing with the strange feeling inside her.

Ty’s wife.

She’d said those words so proudly and so happily for four years, all through college. Then she’d gotten her first teaching job and he’d left town, and she’d never said them again.

Who knew it would churn her up so much, saying them now?

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