Wife for Hire

by Christine Bell

  amazing nights together that she wouldn’t have traded for anything.

  “That’s good news.”

  “I thought so. I already took a ride down to the FedEx office and had it overnighted to Gavin. We should hear late tomorrow, if all goes well.”

  She gave him an encouraging smile, but inside, she died a little. They had one more week, but if they were able to get to the bottom of things sooner, it would be less than that. Less time to be with Owen, kissing and touching and living. She cleared her throat. “Awesome. I know you’re anxious to get this over with.”

  He sat down in the chair across from her and seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment. He took a quick glance around the empty great room and leaned closer. “Liza made a pass at me.”

  She set down the magazine, shocked by the hot fury that flooded her. “Really.”

  “It was subtle, but I’m fairly certain. Thing is, when I rebuffed her, she made like I’d misread it somehow. It was odd to say the least. I’m thinking your whole theory on Nico might hold true for Liza as well. It will be interesting to see what Gavin turns up, but I feel like the answer is right there, almost in our reach.”

  She tried to compartmentalize. Liza’s actions likely had nothing to do with Owen. She was doing her job, whatever that entailed. Like I should be doing, she reminded herself with a jolt of guilt. She was here to help Owen, and all she’d done for the last few days was baby her bruise and grind all over her boss. Things were coming to a close fast. She needed to start pulling away if she had any hope of coming out of this in one piece.

  “I have a session with Sarabeth in five minutes, but we can get into it more when I get back. You going to be around later?”

  “If you’re going to be around, I’ll make sure of it.” He stood and reached down to help her to her feet. “I’m sure Sarabeth wouldn’t mind if you were a little late today.” Tipping her back in his arms, he slanted his mouth over hers in a searing kiss. Cupping her neck, he drew lazy patterns on her chin with his thumb, and his tongue slipped between her lips for a taste.

  It would be so easy to pretend that his tenderness meant something. That this was more than a sexual fling for him. But it didn’t. And it wasn’t. She pulled away and straightened. “I can’t. I’ve really got to go. I’ll see you tonight.”

  He gave her a puzzled look but didn’t try to stop her.

  By the time she reached Sarabeth’s office, she had resorted to biting her lip to hold back the tears. When the other woman opened the door with a warm smile, Lindy couldn’t help it. She burst into tears.

  Sarabeth pulled her into the office and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Sit. Come on, sit.”

  Lindy sat on the couch, and instead of sitting across from her as was her custom, Sarabeth curled in next to her. “Please, Lindy, tell me what’s wrong. I’m here to help.”

  The concern in her clear green eyes was so genuine it only made Lindy cry harder. Geez, she hoped Sarabeth wasn’t part of this mess. Lindy really liked the young doctor. Under different circumstances, they would’ve certainly been friends. There was a shit-storm brewing, and she hated to see her in the middle of it. Guilt over her deceit sent her tears into overdrive, and she let out a few pathetic snuffles to go along with them.

  She opened her mouth and realized with a start that she was a hair’s breadth from spilling her guts. Not okay. She swiped a hand over her eyes and tried to think of what to say that would relieve some of this emotional turmoil, but not blow their cover.

  “I love my husband to pieces, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t love me,” she blurted.

  Geez, tell her how you really feel, Lindy.

  Sarabeth’s eyes widened and she drew back. “Wait, what? No.” She shook her head emphatically. “No way. I see the way he looks at you. Like he’s calling on every bit of self-control not to ravish you. Frankly, it makes me a little envious,” she said with a laugh. “That look we talked about in our first session? That’s how he is around you.”

  Lindy’s heart stuttered a bit before she got a hold of herself. “You’re misreading him. The physical side of things is good, I won’t lie. But the emotional stuff? Not there.”

  “Is this because he cheated?”

  Lindy winced. She’d forgotten that was their ruse. “No. I’ve moved past that. This is about here and now. I don’t think he ever loved me. I don’t think he will ever allow himself to love anyone.” She buried her face in her palms. “He doesn’t even wear his wedding ring,” she muttered. It hadn’t been her intention to go there, but now that it was out, she realized how much that bothered her. Owen’s bare finger was a glaring reminder that she had zero chance of a happily ever after with him. A symbol of his absolute conviction that love equaled pain, and she had no clue how to change his mind.

  Sarabeth blew out a sigh. “I shouldn’t tell you this. It’s my job to listen, not talk. But the other night when we played that blindfold game? You should’ve seen his face when you touched him. It was like magic. If the two of you weren’t so caught up, you would have realized. The whole room got quiet, and all the other men were eyeing Owen like he was the luckiest guy in the world. Now I don’t know about a ring, or what his reasons behind that are, but I know one thing. That man loves you.”

  Lindy rubbed absently at her temple, desperately trying to ward off the headache building there. What if she was right? What if Owen did love her but wasn’t ready to face it yet? She tried not to let the hope build, but it was a force to be reckoned with, blossoming in her chest before she could squash it.

  “I’ve got an idea.” Sarabeth had reverted to her professional voice, and that somehow gave Lindy comfort. Surely a doctor would be able to come up with a good solution.

  Sarabeth stood and went to her desk. After a moment of shuffling around, she returned holding a deck of cards. “Bring these back to your room tonight and see if he’ll play with you.”

  Lindy took them and read the back. Couple’s Truth or Dare.

  “I give them to couples when they need a push to communicate. The men like it because some of the dares are really naughty,” she said with a half-smile. “But there are also a lot of soul-baring questions in the truth pile. I’ve had many people tell me that it prompted some real heart to heart talks. Maybe Owen just needs an opening to tell you how he’s feeling.”

  It sure couldn’t hurt. Unless, of course, he was feeling exactly what she feared he was…

  Nothing at all.

  …

  Owen stepped through the suite door and looked around the dim room for Lindy. She’d skipped out at dinner a few minutes early, saying she needed to make a call. Could she really have made her call and fallen asleep in the time it took him to say his goodbyes? He hoped not. Their time was growing short, and he found that he couldn’t get enough of her these past couple of days. He shoved back the sick feeling he got in the pit of his stomach whenever he thought of it, because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. Once they left Colorado, there was no way it could continue. Sure, he could likely convince her otherwise, but Lindy deserved to be loved and he didn’t have any of that to give.

  “Hey,” she called from the bedroom doorway. She had on a peach baby-doll nightgown he’d never seen before, and blast of need sizzled through him.

  “You look delicious.” He crossed the room and stopped a few feet away for a closer inspection. “Absolutely delicious.” He reached out and traced the neckline with his finger, marveling at the softness of her skin. The pulse in her neck fluttered, and it sent a jolt straight to his groin. She was so responsive.

  “I have a game for us to play,” she said, taking a step back into the candlelit bedroom.

  “I will play any game you want,” he growled, following her. “Boss and secretary. Doctor and nurse. Or, if we want to take it into the twenty-first century, scientist and equally intelligent and highly respected scientist.”

  She laughed, just as he’d hoped, and he tried not to examine why that put suc
h a pep in his step. “None of those, although I wouldn’t rule it out.” She grabbed a deck of cards from the nightstand and thrust them toward him. “Sarabeth gave them to me, and it sounded fun.”

  He didn’t bother to look. If there was a sex game, and this gorgeous woman wanted to play it with him, he certainly wasn’t about to argue.

  “Let’s do it.”

  She sat on the bed and prepared the cards while he slipped off his tie and stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers. He settled across from her, eyeing the neat piles stacked on a breakfast tray. The red stack of cards had the word Dare emblazoned on them, the blue, Truth. She leaned forward and handed him a die with three red sides and three blue. The fabric covering her breasts dipped, and he found himself momentarily entranced by the valley between them.

  “The rules are simple. Roll and pick a card.”

  He took the die and blew on it playfully before tossing it. It skittered across the tray and landed on blue. He scowled at the cards. “I want a do over.”

  “No way, pal.” She plucked up a card and cleared her throat. “What it the sexiest part of your opponent’s body?”

  He took his time about it. There was so much to choose from. Her breasts. Her legs. That ass. “Your lips,” he said, locking his gaze on the part in question. She flushed with pleasure, wetting them nervously and he grinned.

  “Your turn.”

  She looked almost giddy as she rolled. “Blue,” she said and laughed when he groaned.

  He picked a blue card and read. “If you could bottle one of your opponent’s personality traits, what would it be?”

  She regarded him for second, and answered without hesitation. “Your loyalty.”

  Her answer took him by surprise and he forgot to obsess over the mysterious red cards for a second. “Really?”

  She nodded. “I think because you prize it so highly in others, you make sure to embody that trait yourself. What you’re doing here for Cara is remarkable. Most people would’ve handed her a check, maybe taken her out and gotten her drunk, and then went on with their own lives. Not you.”

  Her eyes shined. For him. She looked so animated and beautiful, it hurt. He cleared his throat, looking away. “I appreciate that.”

  She handed him the die. “You’re up.”

  He rolled, suddenly wondering if this was the best idea. Things could get sticky if they kept landing on—

  “Blue,” she said with a stiff sounding laugh. She took up the card and read. “Tell your opponent a secret that you’ve never told another soul.”

  He sat there, debating how to handle this one. He cared about Lindy and clearly the game was important to her. But, shit, he did not want to do this. He steeled himself. “When I was nine, I broke the basket off Mary Callahan’s bike. I glued it on, and it fell off the next day. I never confessed.”

  Lindy smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. Whatever she’d been hoping for, it wasn’t that. Before he could call a halt to their game and suggest something less bloody awful, she rolled.

  “Red,” she said, sending him a coy look under her lashes.

  Thank God. He selected a card and read. “Pretend you’re at a swanky strip club and give your opponent a sexy striptease.” Jackpot. Surely that would break the weird tension between them and get a whole new kind of tension brewing.

  He picked up the tray and set it on the nightstand, before propping up the pillows and settling back onto the bed.

  “What kind of music would you like?” he asked. Her eyes were wide and she fidgeted with her wedding band. He wondered briefly if she’d back out, but she raised her chin and sent him a saucy grin.

  “Big band, maybe?”

  The vice that had gripped his chest loosened. He’d thought it was over. That she was going to try to push him somewhere he wasn’t going to go. But here she was, his take-no-prisoners Lindy. His for now, at least.

  He picked up the stereo remote and flipped through until he found a classic R&B station. Strains of Otis Redding poured from the surround sound speakers.

  She climbed off the edge of the bed and made her way around to his side. Her hips swayed as she moved, keeping sensual time with her steps. The girl had moves. She held his gaze and lifted an elegant hand to her neck, trailing it slowly, so slowly, down. Tracing her delicate collarbone, slipping into the gentle valley of her cleavage. She ran her thumb over her nipple, drawing it to a stiff peak. His breath caught in his throat.

  She twisted, gyrated, swiveled, and shook. The whole time, he was enthralled. No strip club in the world ever had it so good. She turned away and bent low, peering at him from the V between her thighs. Laying her palms on her ass cheeks, she gave a squeeze just like he wanted so badly to do. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he tugged at the neck of his T-shirt.

  She turned back to face him and reached for the hem of her nightie. “You ready, Irish?” she whispered.

  “Hell, yes.” His body was jacked and primed to blow. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she tugged the silk up to reveal her stomach and those beautiful breasts. She tossed the nightgown aside and moved to crawl on top of him.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he rasped.

  She paused, and he slipped a finger under the elastic of her panties. “Boy, you’re greedy, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer with words, opting instead to close his fist around the scrap of satin and doing what he’d wanted to do earlier that week. They snapped off in his hands and she gasped. He didn’t wait for her to catch her breath. He spanned her waist and dragged her on top of him. Her body molded instantly to his, her soft parts lining up with his hard ones, her slick center pressing against his swollen shaft. Thank God she was as turned on as he was. He wanted her now, hard and dirty.

  “Umm,” she moaned, bending to pepper his jaw and neck with sucking kisses, wriggling her hips to get closer, to take him into her heat.

  “Condom,” he groaned.

  “I’m on the Pill, if you want to—”

  “Oh, fuck yeah, I want to.” The fact that she trusted that he would never endanger her sent a primal sense of pride coursing through him.

  He rolled her onto her back in one fluid motion, spreading her knees with his. He slipped a hand between them to ready her, but she shoved it aside.

  “Inside me. Now,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his length, working him against the sensitive knot between her thighs.

  He reared back and thrust forward. He groaned her name, sinking, unfettered, deep into that tight, gripping channel. She arched against him and held him close.

  The second she released him he moved, sliding into her decadent heat and retreating, the sensual drag of tender flesh obliterating what remained of his composure. He pounded into her, his hips moving like pistons driving them to the brink.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” she chanted, her head tossing back and forth on the pillow. The storm broke and she let out a wail, her body sucking at his, pulling him over with her. His whole body quaked and he followed her over the edge.

  He slumped forward, burying his face in the sweet skin of her neck. “Amazing,” he whispered.

  He probably should’ve kept that to himself, but it was the truth. He rolled to his side, pulling her with him. Nestling her into the crook of his arm, he wondered how he was going to go back to his regularly scheduled life.

  A life without any amazing in it at all.

  …

  Lindy stirred as a chill passed over her. She burrowed deeper into the warmth of Owen’s shoulder and listened to his even breath. Damn, she would miss this. The game had almost been a major failure, but she’d pulled it out in the end. Maybe he hadn’t told her he loved her, but she could see it in his eyes. If only they had more time. Time so he could realize what she already knew.

  The emotion welled up inside her and couldn’t be contained. “I love you,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “I love you so much.”

  Owen stiffened and his breath h
alted. She froze, afraid to speak in case she was wrong. Maybe he was just shifting in his sleep. But his muscles tensed more with each passing second, as if he couldn’t wait to move. She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat. “Y-you’re awake?”

  “I am.” His tone was clipped, and he tugged his arm from beneath her head to sit up, pulling away from her. Her stomach clenched. The disappointment was crushing even though she’d known this moment would come. She’d hoped for a little longer, but she’d brought it to a premature end with her careless words. The fat lady was warming up, and there was nothing Lindy could do to stop her. She’d never known such helplessness.

  “Lindy,” he said, but paused when she shot to her feet.

  He could ruin what they had if he chose, but she wasn’t about to listen to some lecture about how he was right for doing it. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I thought you were asleep, but really, it doesn’t change anything.”

  “Dammit, Lindy, it changes everything. Everything.”

  She searched his stormy face and wished to God his eyes would clear. That he’d stop looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “No. Said or unsaid, I love you just the same, and I’m not sorry.” Her voice trembled but she held her ground.

  “I am.”

  The two words cut through her, hard and deep, and she couldn’t keep the sob from breaking free. “Please, don’t say that.”

  He shot to his feet and faced her, arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t lay the blame for this at my feet. I never asked for your love. Do you know, my mother’s face lit up like an asteroid shooting through the sky every time my old man walked into a room? And when he walked out for the last time, it killed her.”

  His jaw was tight, his eyes cold. Two pieces of flint, stark against his skin. He spoke in a monotone, his voice giving away no sign of his inner turmoil. But she knew this man now and knew his pain as well as if it were her own. Her anger drained away in one fell swoop, and hot tears filled her eyes. She blinked hard to ward them off.

  “It was a slow process. Took a few years. Hundreds of days filled with debilitating depression, insomnia because every time she fell asleep she dreamed he was back. And every time she woke, she had to relive it all over again. I was there trying to pick up the pieces. Makes you grow up fast…see things clearly. Eventually, her body broke down, little by little, and one day she was gone. I was fifteen.” He shook his head, the finality in his tone like a knife to her heart. “I’ll never let someone have that kind of power over me.”

  “Owen, please—” She stood and stepped toward him, but he held up a staying hand.

  “I can’t be what you want me to be. I don’t have it in me.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” she protested. “Depression is a disease. She should have gotten help. He was wrong for leaving you there with her in that condition. But love, true love, can be so beautiful.”

  “How would you know?”

  “My parents had it. I’ve seen it.”

  “Once? I’ve watched it fail a thousand times. Look at Cara. Hell, look around you. The couples here are a fucking mess. I should trust we’re going to be that one couple who makes it? My chances of getting struck by lightning are better.” His face was tight with grim resolve. “I never lied to you, Lindy. You knew we had no future, and you made your choice.”

  Bitterness threatened to choke her, and she nodded, the anger rising again. “You’re absolutely right. And you’ve made yours.” She rose to her feet and strode toward the bathroom, desperate to keep it together for one more minute. “It’s funny, I used to agree with you and think of myself as a chicken because everything scares me. I’m afraid of airplanes and chairlifts and skiing, and yeah, I’m even afraid of falling in love. But you know what? I do all of it in spite of my fear. And that? That makes me braver than you.”

  She didn’t wait for a response before closing the bathroom door in his face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Owen stared at the amber liquid in his glass. It was a sad day indeed when even Tullamore Dew tasted like piss.

  “Howdy there, O’Neil!” Calvin Cedarhurst boomed, giving him a hearty slap on the back. “Where you been?”

  He’d spent the past eighteen hours at Cara’s hotel while Lindy told everyone he was nursing a pulled muscle. Once he and Lindy had it out the night before, he thought it best for them to both get some space. Cara had been happy for the face-to-face update and the company. She’d known something was bothering him, but hadn’t pressed, and for that he was grateful.

  He chose to ignore Cedarhurst’s question and settled on a nod and a terse greeting. “Hello, Calvin.” Owen didn’t look up, hoping maybe he would recognize a man not in the mood for chatter. Fat chance.

  “Back my friend here up with another, and I’ll take one of whatever he’s having.” He lumbered over to the stool closest to Owen and hauled himself onto it with a wheeze. “I need a man-sized chair, you know what I mean? They make ’em bigger in Texas.” He chuckled at his own joke, but stopped when Owen didn’t join him. “Awful quiet there, son. Lady giving you grief?”

  He shrugged and slugged back another swallow of scotch as Lindy’s words replayed in his mind. Said or unsaid, I love you just the same. And what had her honesty gotten her? Heartache, like love always did.

  His own heart gave a hollow thump, and he set his drink on the bar. At least it would all be over soon. Gavin had called him that morning to let him know he’d received the package. Owen expected a call in the next couple hours that would hopefully help him bring Nico’s scheme tumbling down. Cara was on standby ready to come when the police were called.

  He glanced at his watch and let out an exasperated sigh. He barely had patience for the windbag on a good day, and today definitely did not qualify. “This place isn’t exactly my cup of tea. I’m looking forward to going back to Long Island.”

  “Up until last night, I would’ve agreed with you, partner. Bitsy and me have been getting along worse than usual.”