The Heir's Convenient Wife

Dell brushed that thought aside, but his gaze drifted to her lips nonetheless. She had pretty lips, plump but not overly so. The kind of lips a man would like to feel beneath his own. He could see why Lee had let things get out of hand.

But his staring was making her uncomfortable. A trace of delicious pink climbed up her throat.

“You should smile more,” he said, almost without thought.

She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I’ll try to remember that. Smiling at each other should be part of our plan, shouldn’t it?”

Oh, yes, the plan.

“I suppose we’d better start brainstorming,” he agreed, glad that she had been thinking straight while he had been ogling her mouth. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black notebook and a pen.

Her eyes widened.

“What?” he said.

“You’re really very good at what you do, aren’t you?” she asked. “I mean, of course, you are. You run an empire, you hire and fire people, you date fabulous women and command the attention of important people. Politicians and lawyers and media types and such.”

“All that because I took out a pen and paper?”

“No. It was more the way you did it. You’re going to make a plan and we’re going to carry it out and you have no doubt that everything will go according to that plan. It comes naturally. You’re an O’Ryan, and controlling the universe is in your genes.” She said that as if it were a new discovery she had just made after having been married to him for many months.

“You seem concerned. Am I pushing you?”

She studied him for a minute, then slowly shook her head. “No, it’s more a matter of you being so sure that things will turn out a certain way and me being nervous that I’ll mess it up. I tend to just let loose and do things and sometimes that doesn’t work so well. Although—” she lifted one shoulder in a shrug “—I’m not sure even I could mess up your game plan once you’ve set the course.”

Ouch. He had worked hard at learning to be organized and in charge. Barreling through with a logical plan had helped his parents’ disaster of a marriage survive, it had enabled him to overcome an early heartbreak and had kept him ahead of his competition in business, but he supposed that to someone like Regina he might appear overbearing.

“You’re frowning. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said…whatever I said.” Regina’s voice was soft.

He held up one hand. “You should say what you think. That’s part of being married.”

“How do you know?”

He smiled and shrugged. “I’m guessing.”

She returned his smile. “Well, you probably are right about us needing a blueprint. And…everything.”

He raised a brow.

“Okay, almost everything. I’m sure you’re not perfect.”

Dell’s smile grew.

“Well, you must have some flaws,” she reasoned.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

She looked so deliciously flustered at her frank words that he couldn’t help chuckling.

“You are amazing,” he said.

Pale pink tinged her cheeks again. Why had he never noticed that she was a blusher before yesterday? There was something wickedly delicious and erotic about a woman who blushed. “Amazing? Maybe your judgment isn’t as good as I thought,” she said, still visibly flustered. “Take your pen. Let’s get to work. How do we go about trying to get started on our marriage plans? What should we do?”

Kiss was the first thought that came into his mind, but he quickly squelched it. This had been a difficult year for Regina, including an unexpected pregnancy, the betrayal of a man she had trusted, a hasty wedding and a devastating miscarriage. The two of them had started married life in a rush. He knew the mailman and the valet at the parking garage better than he knew her. When they finally touched, if they ever touched, he wanted her to know who she was kissing. Trust had to be established, and given her past, that would be impossible if he pushed her too fast. They needed time and more.

“I’d like to visit you at work again,” he said, scribbling that down.

She looked startled. “Why?”

Because she had friends there who cared about her and would protect her even if he did something foolish. “I’ve never seen you at work,” he said, and that was the truth as well.

“I’ve never seen you at work, either.”

Dell thought of his office. Sophisticated, expensive, oppressively dull. He loved his work, but the offices were the same as they had been in his father’s time and his grandfather’s before that. They reeked of the O’Ryan legacy and would be considered stuffy by modern standards. Regina was the epitome of modern with her cute little shockingly gaudy shoes, her digital cameras and her creative spirit.

“You might find it boring,” he said, surprised that it mattered to him what she thought. He’d never cared for people’s opinions before.

She crossed her arms, obviously trying to look firm. Instead she looked like an adorable kitten trying to wield control. “Fair is fair,” she said. “If you visit the Belles, I should visit O’Ryan Enterprises.”

“You’re right,” he conceded.

“What else should we do? I suspect that being a normal, married couple in my world and yours is a bit different. What do normal, married people do in your world?”

They sleep together, he thought. They make love. The thought brought instant heat to his body, and he forced himself to push it aside. “I think we should make our own rules. We’ve both agreed that we don’t have a conventional marriage and what we’re each looking for is…a partner?” he said.

She nodded. “A companion?”

“Of sorts.”

“And you would expect…what?” She looked a bit nervous. His heart ached. Dell was willing to wager that when she had delivered his mail that day she would have never guessed that she would end up here today, in this way, with him, a man she would not have chosen to spend her life with.

“Relax, Regina,” he said, reaching over and covering her hand with his own. “I won’t make you meet the queen.”

Her eyes widened momentarily and then she laughed. “Good. I won’t ask you to come with me to the seamier places I sometimes travel to when taking photos.”

Dell let that sink in. Interesting and alarming. Had has wife been spending time in dark alleys and he didn’t know about it? Was she safe? And could they bridge their gaps and make this marriage work?

He hoped so. It had been difficult enough dodging bad publicity when they had gotten married. Divorcing so soon afterward would only make the gossips and the media gather. They would dig deeper. The O’Ryan name would be smudged and Regina would be gossiped about. Her experience with Lee would no doubt be discovered and made public. Some might accuse her of being a gold digger, and that kind of thing couldn’t help The Wedding Belles, the business that was Regina’s life. So, if they could avoid divorce they should.

“All right,” he said, just as if she hadn’t mentioned the words seamier places. “Now that we’ve set a course, I’ll want to meet the people you spend your time with.” And I’ll want to make sure you’re safe, he thought.

“Dell, the shop isn’t exactly a male kind of place. Are you sure?”

He smiled. “I’ll be brave, and I’ll stay out of your way. Let’s just call this a beginning. Now about those seamy places…”

Frowning, Regina looked up at him. “I don’t go there to embarrass you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And I don’t end up there often, but…”

He waited.

“In my spare time, I freelance, and I’m doing a pictorial on Boston. I cover a lot of territory and a variety of settings. Businesses, bridges, landmarks, artists, executives, homemakers, museum curators, hot dog vendors, homeless people and yes, sometimes prostitutes or addicts. I interview them. I listen to their stories. They let me take their pictures. It’s my work,” she explained solemnly. “It matters to me.”

“Understood,” he said. “But it’s your safety I’m concerned about. I can hire people.”

She considered that. “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that, but I’ll be careful. I always am, and since night photography isn’t my specialty, I’m out in daylight, usually on Sundays. The risk is slight.”

Their gazes met, held. Dell couldn’t help thinking that their ideas of what constituted a risk might be different…

But she was already uncomfortable now, practically squirming from all his questions. He would file the subject away for later.

For now, he made a few more suggestions about things they could do and gatherings they might attend together. He’d make sure there was good publicity surrounding these events. Then, if things fell apart and she still wanted out once these two months were up, at least the world would know her as a real and valuable person, not just as the whirlwind wife of Dell O’Ryan.

“Dell?” Regina suddenly said.

He looked at her. She was clenching her water glass.

“I’m sorry. Have I overdone things? Is there anything we should change or omit?” he asked.

She sat up taller and took a visible breath. “I just want you to know that I’m going to do my best and give this a solid effort, no-holds-barred. In the end…we’ll at least be friends, won’t we?”

Their eyes met. “I hope we will if it comes to that.” Maybe it would. No doubt this marriage had been far less than the salvation he had planned. She had obviously once wanted something with Lee that she had lost, and marriage with Dell O’Ryan hadn’t been it. “You’re sure you’re all right with this plan?” he prodded gently again.

Regina looked slightly shaken but she nodded, her silky hair sliding against her shoulders. “Absolutely.”

“All right then. We’re on,” he agreed.

“What do we do now?” Regina asked, looking around the rapidly emptying restaurant.

“We go home,” Dell said simply, but as he stood to pull out her chair he realized that there was nothing simple about it. Beginning tonight they were moving down a new path, one that would lead them into the spotlight they had avoided thus far. As a prominent Bostonian he was used to having private moments showing up in the newspapers. Now that he and Regina would be spending time together, they would be on display. It wasn’t the first time. When they had first gotten married, there had been photographers hovering, but after the two of them had failed to make public appearances together, the interest in them had tapered off. It would resurface, and there would be questions about why they were a couple again. The fact that Regina had suffered a miscarriage might come up.

Dell tried to block the automatic ache that assaulted him at that memory, but it was difficult. He concentrated on the fact that he would do what was necessary to protect Regina and to distract reporters from that topic. That meant giving them something else to concentrate on. And now was the time to begin setting the stage with the media should there be any gossip miners around.

“I should—” Put my arm around you, he thought, but given their circumstances and the newness of all this, that seemed intrusive. Instead he reached down, his fingertips sliding against her palm as he folded his hand around hers.

She was warm, smooth, soft. His skin tingled. All he was doing was holding her hand, yet it felt like an intimate caress.

Regina looked down to where their hands were linked. “Of course,” she said. “A married couple would do this. We’ll go home.” Where they would not be on display.

Where they could be private, Dell thought, then immediately pushed the vision of Regina in his arms away. She had just asked him for a divorce yesterday. She had agreed to a plan to get to know each other and nothing more. This marriage wasn’t real yet, not in the true sense of the word.

And it might never be.

For the first time in a long while, Regina dreaded seeing her friends. The Belles loved her and knew her so well that they were practically mind readers. And the truth was that when she and Dell had arrived home last night, she had been painfully aware of him as a man in a way she hadn’t been before.

That was risky. She’d been hurt by men who wanted to be friends but not more. And then there had been Lee who had left her pregnant and—given the fact that she’d funneled most of her money into The Wedding Belles business—with almost zero funds to raise a child. The whole scenario had been utterly demeaning and frightening.

“Now, I’m…”

Better, she wanted to say, but the truth was that she was a mess, she admitted, struggling into her jeans and slipping on a pair of electric-blue clogs with silver lightning bolts on the sides. This business with Dell was making her feel weird and uncomfortable. Even physically they were night and day, him being the tall, gorgeous, lean one and her being the ten extra pounds one. Moreover, she was socially not of his class, and their basic life philosophies would appear in two different volumes if there were encyclopedias that tracked such things.

The fact that they were now trying to think of each other as an actual husband and wife was making her crazy. He had held her hand, and her body had tightened in response. They had entered the house together, and all she could think of was what he must have done with other women in bed.

And then she had realized that he had probably been forced to give up sleeping with other women this past year and she hadn’t been sleeping with him, either. It had been impossible not to wonder if he was feeling sexually frustrated or if she even made him think of desire.

“Agh!” she yelped, pulling on a powder-blue bell-sleeved blouse. “Don’t even think such things.”

Instead she should think about today and plan ahead the way Dell would.

“Okay, then,” she said to herself. “When Dell shows up at the shop, the Belles are going to notice a change in the way we’re interacting.”

That was bad. She had been distraught for so long, especially after she’d lost her child. Now that she was coming back to life her friends might think that she would do something foolish, like fall in love with another man who really didn’t want her in the ways that counted. So if Dell brushed against her or took her hand and she trembled, they would definitely notice. That was how well they knew her.

Regina groaned. Her plan crumbled. She had agreed to give them a try, but she didn’t think this new, shaky marriage could hold up under too much scrutiny, especially not the scrutiny of the people who loved and knew her best. Dell had saved her when she’d needed saving. He wanted a real marriage. She couldn’t betray him by telling her friends the truth but she couldn’t lie to her friends, either.

What if they asked him what was going on?

He’s an honorable man. He’ll tell the truth, she thought. He might even mention how practical they were being by pursuing a marriage devoid of love.

Then her friends would hate him. And if her friends hated Dell…

“Things will be beyond uncomfortable,” she muttered. “Even a good marriage would suffer under those circumstances.”

There was only one option. Keep Dell and her friends apart as much as possible until the marriage was either seriously settled or dissolved. But for today…

CHAPTER FOUR

“JUST so you know, Dell’s stopping by today,” Regina told her friends fifteen minutes before the shop was due to open.

Her friends all turned to look at her. “Wow, twice in two days after never having been here before. Anything you want to tell us about?” Julie asked.

Regina struggled for words.

“I mean, besides butt out of my marriage?” Callie asked.

That brought a round of laughter and helped Regina relax a little. “I know you’re just curious because you care about me, but he’s a good man,” she said simply.

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